by Annie Waldman, Asia Fields and Ashley Clarke, design by Zisiga Mukulu, and photography by Bethany Mollenkof for ProPublica

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The National Institutes of Health is responsible for more than 80% of the world’s grant investment in biomedical research. Its funding has sparked countless medical breakthroughs — on cancer, diabetes, strokes — and plays a fundamental role in the development of pharmaceutical drugs.

Scientists compete vigorously for a slice of the more than $30 billion that the agency doles out annually; they can spend years assembling grant applications that stretch thousands of pages in hopes of convincing peer reviewers of the promise of their projects. Only 1 in 5 gets chosen.

The NIH has rarely revoked funding once it has been awarded. Out of the tens of thousands of grants overseen by the institution since 2012, it terminated fewer than five for violations of the agency’s terms and conditions.

Then Donald Trump was reelected.

Since his January inauguration, his administration has terminated more than 1,450 grants, withholding more than $750 million in funds; officials have said they are curbing wasteful spending and “unscientific” research. The Department of Government Efficiency gave the agency direction on what to cut and why, ProPublica has previously found, bypassing the NIH’s established review process.

“The decision to terminate certain grants is part of a deliberate effort to ensure taxpayer dollars prioritize high-impact, urgent science,” said Andrew G. Nixon, the director of communications for the Department of Health and Human Services. He did not respond to questions about the terminated grants or how patients may be impacted, but he said, “Many discontinued projects were duplicative or misaligned with NIH’s core mission. NIH remains focused on supporting rigorous biomedical research that delivers real results — not radical ideology.”

Targeted projects, however, were seeking cures for future pandemics, examining the causes of dementia and trying to prevent HIV transmission.

The mass cancellation of grants in response to political policy shifts has no precedent, former and current NIH officials told ProPublica. It threatens the stability of the institution and the scientific enterprise of the nation at large. Hundreds of current and former NIH staffers published a declaration this week — cosigned by thousands of scientists across the world, including more than 20 Nobel laureates — decrying the politicization of science at the agency and urging its director to reinstate the canceled grants. Many researchers have appealed the terminations, and several lawsuits are underway challenging the cuts.

It has been difficult for scientists and journalists to convey the enormity of what has happened these past few months and what it portends for the years and decades to come. News organizations have chronicled cuts to individual projects and sought to quantify the effects of lost spending on broad fields of study. To gain a deeper understanding of the toll, ProPublica reached out to more than 500 researchers, scientists and investigators whose grants were terminated.

More than 150 responded to share their experiences, which reveal consequences that experts say run counter to scientific logic and even common sense.

They spoke of the tremendous waste generated by an effort intended to save money — years of government-funded research that may never be published, blood samples in danger of spoiling before they can be analyzed.

Work to address disparities in health, once considered so critical to medical advancement that it was mandated by Congress, is now being cut if the administration determines it has any connection to “diversity,” “equity” or “gender ideology.” Caught in this culling were projects to curb stillbirths, child suicides and infant brain damage.

Researchers catalogued many fears — about the questions they won’t get to answer, the cures they will fail to find and the colleagues they will lose to more supportive countries. But most of all, they said they worried about the people who, because of these cuts, will die.

Research Frozen

The NIH often awards funding in multiyear grants, giving scientists the time and intellectual freedom to pursue their work uninterrupted. They plan experiments, hire staff and make equipment purchases on long timelines.

Now, studies can’t be completed. Papers can’t be published. Years of research may be lost and millions of dollars wasted.

Grants Terminated:

A project to improve recruitment of participants in Alzheimer’s clinical trials.

A study to increase vaccine uptake in underserved populations.

A study investigating in-utero exposure to contaminants in public drinking water.

An examination of the consequences of abortion restrictions.

Diana Greene Foster, a reproductive health researcher and professor at the University of California, San Francisco

After the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, demographer Diana Greene Foster set out to study the outcomes of pregnant patients who showed up in emergency departments. She wanted to know whether state restrictions were causing delays in care.

“This needs to be answered for courts to consider the evidence,” said Foster, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. “Every day that goes by, people are potentially at risk.”

Less than one year into a five-year NIH grant, she had arrived at some early findings: “Abortion bans don’t stop very many people from getting abortions,” she said. “Bans actually cause people to have their abortions later in pregnancy.” For those who live in states with bans, she found, second-trimester abortions increased from 8% of procedures to 17%, requiring more complex interventions to end their pregnancies and increasing their risk of complications.

But before the data could be published, the NIH informed her on March 21 that the grant was terminated. It was no longer in line with agency priorities, a letter stated, specifying that studies on “gender identity” “ignore, rather than seriously examine, biological realities.”

The termination left Foster confused. “They are wrong that studying gender minority populations is not important,” she said. “But my study is not about gender identity. It is relevant to anyone who is pregnant, regardless of how they identify.”

Foster had to pause her research while she searched for other funding. “This was clearly a politically motivated cut,” she said.

ProPublica heard from more than 70 researchers who said that they were unable to continue their projects due to the terminations.

“Two and a half years into a three-year grant, and to all of a sudden stop and not fully be able to answer the original questions, it’s just a waste.” —Ethan Moitra, associate professor at Brown University, who was researching whether brief therapy can improve mental health for LGBTQ+ people

“We are now scrambling to figure out if there are parts we can continue or salvage.” —Julia Marcus, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who was researching whether HIV prevention medicine can be made available over the counter

“To build trust between health care providers, health researchers in communities takes decades of work, and scientists have already done the work. Now this is going to be depleted.” —Jesus Ramirez-Valles, professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who was examining how HIV impacts the physical and mental health of gay men as they age

Patient Studies Interrupted

Thousands of studies supported by the NIH involve human subjects. Some include clinical trials, in which researchers recruit participants, often with grave conditions from cancer to HIV, to test the value of novel treatments and protocols.

In addition to jeopardizing data, terminating a grant in the middle of an active study may worsen participants’ conditions and put them at higher risk of death.

Grants Terminated:

A study to prevent sexually transmitted infections with common antibiotics.

A study to increase access to kidney transplant evaluations.

A clinical trial to understand the effectiveness of flu and COVID-19 vaccine text message reminders.

A study to test a protocol to prevent HIV transmission.

Amy Nunn and Dr. Philip Chan, behavioral and social science professors at Brown University

A single daily pill can nearly eliminate the risk of contracting HIV — but only when taken as prescribed. Black and Latino men who have sex with men have more than a 1-in-4 chance of contracting HIV but sometimes struggle to get or stay in care.

Working with community clinics across Mississippi, Washington, D.C., and Rhode Island, Brown University professors Amy Nunn and Dr. Philip Chan set out to examine what happens when people are provided wraparound clinical services before they contract the disease. “This is about preventing people from getting HIV,” Nunn said.

The study provides aggressive case management to help patients navigate the health care system and stay on the treatment, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP, which is available in both oral and injectable forms. Workers provide patients with reminders, help them get coverage and even pick up their medicine.

In 2023, the researchers received about $3.7 million in NIH funding for five years of work. Their team was just starting to gather data that showed the program’s efficacy when the grant was terminated. “This is science that had really great chances of having a huge impact, and all of a sudden, it’s cut off at the knee,” Nunn said.

Chan told ProPublica that he worries that the patients in their study could be harmed by the cut. “There’s no doubt that some of them are going to not stay on PrEP,” said Chan, “and that some of them are going to get HIV.”

At least 30 researchers told ProPublica that the termination of their grant forced them to end clinical research or a trial abruptly, leaving participants in limbo.

“We cannot assay the blood samples that we have collected and paid participants for. A total waste of the money and resources that went into collecting the data.” —Sarah Whitton, professor at the University of Cincinnati, who was identifying risk factors for mental illness and suicidality for young LGBTQ+ women

“We have also had to quickly scramble to keep the study going unfunded to avoid having to stop the treatment and clinical trial for those already enrolled.” —Tiffany Brown, assistant professor at Auburn University, who was developing an eating disorder treatment for LGBTQ+ patients

“With a clinical trial, if you can’t follow participants to the end, you have no information, because the whole point is to see whether there’s change from beginning to end.” —Katie Biello, professor and chair of epidemiology at Brown University’s School of Public Health, who was trying to improve adherence to medication protocols for adolescents with HIV in Brazil

Disparities Disregarded (Edwin Tan/Getty Images)

The Trump administration has banned the NIH from funding grants with a perceived connection to “diversity, equity and inclusion,” alleging that such projects may be discriminatory.

Caught up in the wave of terminations is work seeking to understand why some populations — including women and sexual, racial or ethnic minorities — may be more at risk of certain disorders or diseases.

Grants Terminated:

A study investigating how discrimination affects the mental health of Latino youth.

Research examining maternal behavioral health conditions of Black women.

An examination of the effects of structural racism on people at risk of kidney disease.

A study investigating why women of color disproportionately die from cervical cancer.

Adana Llanos, an epidemiologist and health equity scholar at Columbia University

Despite preventative vaccines and improved screening, more than 4,000 women die every year from cervical cancer. Black and Hispanic women are more likely than their white peers to be diagnosed, and often at later stages.

After more than a decade of studying cancer care disparities, epidemiologist Adana Llanos found that the ZIP code in which a woman received care often plays a pivotal role in how she fares. And in 2023, Llanos and her colleagues were awarded a multiyear NIH grant to further examine inequities, specifically in cervical cancer care and who survives it.

Even though their work targets the women most at risk, Llanos said their research, like most health equity research, will increase our understanding of cervical cancer more broadly. “This work has the potential to improve cancer outcomes for everyone, no matter what you identify as, no matter what your characteristics are,” she said.

Last year, her team began to recruit a cohort of 960 women who had been diagnosed with cervical cancer to track their patterns of care and outcomes. But in March, after the researchers had enrolled about 200 participants, the NIH terminated the funding. Llanos paused enrollment.

The cancellation felt like a betrayal of her study’s participants, she said. Llanos had spent years developing relationships with community groups and cancer patients, gaining their trust so they would feel comfortable sharing their treatment experiences.

“We’ve made commitments to them,” she said.

More than 550 of the terminated grants were focused on health disparities or inequities, attempting to understand why some groups have different health outcomes.

“If you cannot identify groups that are higher risk, it seems like just really bad science. That’s sort of the basics of how you try to conquer a disease.” —Carl Latkin, professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was analyzing the comorbidities of people who have HIV and those at risk for getting it

“Health disparities are just going to get larger, and real folks are going to die.” —Marguerita Lightfoot, professor at the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health, who was studying the value of guaranteed income and financial mentoring to Black youth

“It’s a major principle of epidemiology to target work towards the people who are being disproportionately affected. Now we’re being told that we cannot mention them in our research.” —Dr. Matthew Spinelli, assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who was working to prevent sexually transmitted infections with common antibiotics

LGBTQ+ People Targeted (Jason Koxvold for ProPublica)

One of Trump’s first executive orders was a directive banning federal funds from being used to support or promote so-called “gender ideology.” Hundreds of grants focused on the health of LGBTQ+ populations have been terminated, including many studies focused on young people and those at risk of contracting HIV.

In response to a lawsuit, a federal judge issued an injunction barring the administration from fully enforcing the orders. It canceled the grants anyway, citing agency policy and scientific priorities.

Grants Terminated:

A study to improve the delivery of behavioral health care to LGBTQ+ youth.

Research to address substance use in young men who are at risk for or living with HIV.

An evaluation of disparities in mpox vaccination rates among men who have sex with men.

An investigation of why LGBTQ+ adults are dying by suicide.

Lauren Forrest, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon (Jason Koxvold for ProPublica)

Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults are over three times more likely to consider suicide than their heterosexual peers. Few studies have aimed to figure out how to prevent this.

Last year, Lauren Forrest, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, received a multiyear grant to do so, focusing on LGBTQ+ people who live in rural areas where access to specialized care may be more limited.

She was planning to recruit dozens of participants. But on March 21, she received a notification from the NIH that her grant was terminated because it did not “effectuate” the agency’s priorities, citing its connection to “gender identity.”

“The way they’re going about deciding which grants will or won’t be terminated, it’s not about scientific rigor,” she said. “It’s about literally actively discriminating against health-disparity populations.”

Forrest has been forced to reduce the hours of her research staff, and she now risks losing key lab personnel who may have to seek other employment due to the cuts. “There is no way to recover the lost time, research continuity or training value once disrupted,” she said.

She worries most about the deaths that could have been prevented. “People are going to be harmed because of this,” she said.

More than 300 of the grants terminated by the NIH were focused on LGBTQ+ health care. About 40 of those grants were researching ways to prevent suicide in adults and youth.

“We have a paper that’s ready to go out that shows lesbian women are almost 3 times as likely to have a stillbirth compared to their heterosexual peers. That’s such an avoidable, horrible outcome to happen, and that paper may never be published.” —Brittany Charlton, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who was quantifying obstetrical outcomes for lesbian, gay and bisexual women

“It is devastating to have state-sanctioned dehumanization and exclusion. I am afraid for what these messages will do to the mental health of youth who are told they don’t matter or, for some, that they don’t even exist by parts of society.” —Dr. Sarah Goff, professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was studying how to improve the delivery of mental health care to LGBTQ+ youth

“I honestly burst into tears. The evidence we would have gained from this work will not exist.” —Kirsty Clark, assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, who was finding best practices for preventing suicide in LGBTQ+ preteens

Losing a Generation

The grant terminations and subsequent instability have created a lost generation of scientists, dozens of researchers told ProPublica — cutting off an established pipeline at all stages of researchers’ careers.

Universities are trimming the number of openings in postdoctoral and graduate programs.

Young researchers are struggling to find funding to initiate studies or open new laboratories.

And some scientists are opting to pursue opportunities abroad.

Grants Terminated:

A grant to train researchers and public health professionals on HIV science.

A program to support the development of early-career scientists and researchers.

A grant to support Ph.D. students from historically underrepresented groups.

A program to train the next generation of pediatric research scientists.

Dr. Lauren Harasymiw, a scholar in the NIH’s Pediatric Scientist Development Program

Dr. Lauren Harasymiw was a medical resident in a neonatal intensive care unit when an infant took a turn for the worse. Born at only 23 weeks gestation — the edge of viability — the baby girl experienced a hemorrhage within the ventricles of her brain.

“What does this mean for her?” Harasymiw recalls asking her attending physician. The supervisor didn’t know. “The field of neonatology has made incredible strides over the last decades in helping our babies survive,” Harasymiw said. “But we’ve made less progress in protecting their neurodevelopmental outcomes.”

If doctors could better assess infants’ outcomes after a brain injury, they could target interventions sooner and provide families with better resources. To advance this area of medicine, Harasymiw pursued NIH-funded training to become a pediatric scientist.

But in March, the NIH terminated funding for the Pediatric Scientist Development Program, which funded Harasymiw’s salary and research, claiming that the program was connected to “DEI.”

“This is just ripping out the foundation of my career,” Harasymiw said.

In a statement about the grant terminations, Nixon, the HHS spokesperson, said that the NIH “continues to invest robustly in training and career development opportunities that produce measurable contributions to biomedical science and patient care.” However, he added that “while fostering the next generation of scientists is essential, effective leadership requires clear focus: prioritizing research that is impactful and results-driven over duplicative or low-yield programs.”

Dr. Sallie Permar, who runs the program and is chair of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, was perplexed by the cut; the program seemed to be in line with the administration’s focus on combating chronic disease in children.

“That’s exactly what we’re training these scholars to do,” she said.

More than 50 researchers told ProPublica that the funding cuts would harm the next generation of scholars, discouraging them from practicing in the United States.

“We have a generation of researchers that were planning to focus on these questions that are now either scared or don’t have funding to continue their training, or both.” —Mandi Pratt-Chapman, associate center director for community outreach, engagement and equity at the George Washington Cancer Center, who was identifying best practices for collecting data about LGBTQ+ people at small and rural cancer centers

“Admissions for graduate school have been downsized to a point where prospective students are giving up on pursuing a Ph.D.” —Tigist Tamir, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who received a career development grant and was studying how oxidative stress is regulated in breast cancer and obesity

“I already know several researchers on the job search who ended up taking faculty positions in Canada instead of the U.S.” —Dr. Benjamin Solomon, instructor of immunology and allergy in the department of pediatrics at Stanford Medical School, who received a career development grant and was examining rare genetic immune diseases in children

How We Reported the Story

Shortly after the public became aware of the termination of hundreds of grants at the National Institutes of Health, ProPublica published a call for tips in March, requesting that researchers with canceled grants share their experiences. ProPublica heard from more than 150 researchers and scientists and interviewed more than 70 about how the grant terminations were affecting their projects, their careers and the field of biomedical science at large. The story relies on the personal opinions of the researchers and does not reflect the views of their institutions. To understand the universe of NIH grant terminations, ProPublica relied on two main data sources: spreadsheets of terminated health grants released by the federal government to comply with Trump’s “Radical Transparency About Wasteful Spending” order, and data from Grant Watch, a private initiative tracking the terminations, led by researchers Noam Ross, Scott Delaney, Anthony Barente and Emma Mairson. They have used crowdsourcing and federal sources to create their dataset.

Were you involved in a clinical trial, participating in research or receiving services that have ended, been paused or been delayed because of canceled federal funding? Our reporters want to hear from you.

To share your experience, contact our reporting team at healthfunding@propublica.org.

Melody Kramer and Agnel Philip contributed research.

by T. Christian Miller and Sebastian Rotella

Leer en español.

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In mid-April, President Donald Trump sat down in the Oval Office with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to celebrate a new partnership. They had recently negotiated an extraordinary deal in which El Salvador agreed to incarcerate in a maximum security prison hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants that the Trump administration had labeled as violent criminals, though few had been convicted of such crimes. The U.S. also sent back accused members of the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13 — which both the U.S. and El Salvador have designated as a terrorist organization.

Bukele’s presidency has been defined by his successful crackdown against MS-13. He has jailed tens of thousands of alleged gang members, transforming one of the hemisphere’s most dangerous nations into one of its safest. Although human rights groups have criticized his tactics, Bukele remains extremely popular in El Salvador.

During their meeting at the White House, Trump praised his guest as “one hell of a president.” He shook Bukele’s hand, saying, “We appreciate working with you because you want to stop crime and so do we.”

A long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered evidence at odds with Bukele’s reputation as a crime fighter. The inquiry, which began as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership, expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with MS-13 in the early years of his presidency.

New reporting on that investigation by ProPublica shows that senior officials in Bukele’s government repeatedly impeded the work of a U.S. task force as it pursued evidence of possible wrongdoing by the Salvadoran president and his inner circle.

Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force, according to exclusive interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials, newly obtained internal documents and court records from both countries.

In a previously unreported development, federal agents came to suspect that Bukele and members of his inner circle had diverted U.S. aid funds to the gang as part of the alleged deal to provide it with money and power in exchange for votes and reduced homicide rates. In 2021, agents drew up a request to review U.S. bank accounts held by Salvadoran political figures to look for evidence of money laundering related to the suspected diversion of U.S. funds. The list of names assembled by the agents included Bukele, senior officials and their relatives, according to documents viewed by ProPublica.

“Information obtained through investigation has revealed that the individuals contained within this submission are heavily engaged with MS-13 and are laundering funds from illicit business where MS-13 are involved,” the agents wrote. The people on the list “are also believed to have been funding MS-13 to support political campaigns and MS-13 have received political funds.”

The outcome of the request is not known, but its existence shows that the U.S. investigation had widened to examine suspected corruption at high levels of the Bukele government.

The investigation was led by Joint Task Force Vulcan, a multiagency law enforcement team created at Trump’s request in 2019. Agents found evidence that the Bukele government tried to cover up the pact by preventing the extraditions of gang leaders who faced U.S. charges that include ordering the murders of U.S. citizens and plotting to assassinate an FBI agent.

In addition, U.S. officials helped at least eight of their counterparts in Salvadoran law enforcement flee the country and resettle in the United States or elsewhere because they feared retaliation by their own government, current and former U.S. officials said.

It has been clear from the beginning what Trump wants from El Salvador: an ally who would accept, and even imprison, deportees. Less clear has been what Bukele might want from the United States. In striking the deal with the Salvadoran president, Trump has effectively undercut the Vulcan investigation and shielded Bukele from further scrutiny, current and former U.S. officials said.

Veterans of the Vulcan team are “concerned that all their work, the millions of dollars that were spent, going all over the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, that it will be weakened for political reasons,” said a U.S. official familiar with the investigation.

The task force worked closely with the Salvadoran attorney general’s office, whose prosecutors shared evidence from their own investigation of the gang negotiations and suspected graft in the Bukele government, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials.

“There was good information on corruption between the gang and the Bukele administration,” Christopher Musto, a former senior official at Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, who worked on Vulcan, said about the Salvadoran investigation. “It was a great case.”

In May 2021, Bukele’s legislative majority in Congress ousted the attorney general and justices of the Supreme Court, which oversees extradition requests. Within seven months, newly installed justices reversed or halted six requests for senior gang leaders wanted in the U.S., according to interviews and documents.

“Bukele’s people were coming to the Supreme Court and saying under no circumstances are we extraditing the MS-13 leaders,” said the U.S. official familiar with the investigation. “‘Delay, interfere, undermine, do what you have to do.’”

Senior Bukele officials helped an MS-13 leader with a pending extradition order escape from prison, according to court records, U.S. officials and Salvadoran news reports. At least three other top gang leaders were released from Salvadoran custody after the U.S. filed extradition requests for them, according to Justice Department documents.

Published accounts in the United States and El Salvador have reported allegations that Bukele also pushed for the return of MS-13 leaders to prevent them from testifying in U.S. courts about the pact. Despite his government’s refusal to extradite gang bosses to the United States, the Trump administration in March deported one MS-13 leader accused of terrorism. The Justice Department is now seeking to dismiss charges against a second leader, which would allow him to be sent back to El Salvador, according to recent court filings.

The Justice Department declined to comment in response to questions sent by ProPublica. The State Department referred questions to the Justice Department.

A White House spokesperson did not respond to detailed questions.

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises to the American people and removing dangerous criminals and terrorist illegals who pose a threat to the American public,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson. “We are grateful for President Bukele’s partnership.”

Bukele, the Salvadoran Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Salvadoran Supreme Court did not respond to lists of questions. Bukele has repeatedly denied making any agreement with MS-13. The Trump administration’s deportation of MS-13 members to El Salvador, he said in a post on X, will enable security forces to dismantle the gang.

“This will help us finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators, and sponsors,” the post said.

President Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, during a meeting in the Oval Office in April 2025. Trump has praised Bukele as “one hell of a president.” (Al Drago/The Washington Post/Getty Images) “Just Fear”

Bukele was elected president of El Salvador in February 2019, promising to fight the country’s ingrained political corruption and pervasive gang violence, which he called “one of the greatest challenges” facing the nation.

During his first term, Trump also made MS-13 a high-profile foe, calling it “probably the meanest, worst gang in the world.” In August 2019, Attorney General William P. Barr created the Vulcan task force, teaming federal prosecutors with agents of the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies. The goal: Eradicate MS-13.

For decades, MS-13 has bedeviled law enforcement in the Americas with its vast reach, extreme violence and complex culture. The initials stand for “Mara Salvatrucha.” “Mara” means a swarm, while “salvatrucha” has been said to refer to a clever Salvadoran, according to interviews and an academic study. The number represents the 13th letter of the alphabet, M, in homage to the Mexican Mafia, the powerful Southern California prison gang.

MS-13 emerged in the 1980s in Los Angeles among Salvadoran youths whose families had fled a bloody civil war. The gang expanded throughout the diaspora and, as the U.S. deported planeloads of ex-convicts starting in the 1990s, took root in El Salvador. Although most of the leaders were serving sentences in El Salvador, a jailhouse council of 14 bosses, known as the “Ranfla,” used cellphones to micromanage criminal activities in U.S. cities thousands of miles away.

The gang developed a reputation for torturing, brutalizing and dismembering its victims. Barr has called it “a death cult” in which violence is more important than riches.

“It was like a very violent mom-and-pop operation where the cousins and second cousins all want to be a part of it,” said Carlos Ortiz, who served as the HSI attaché in El Salvador from 2018 to 2024. “Minimal money, compared to others. Even though it’s an organization, a lot of it is just fear. Fear of the high-ranking bosses among the rest of the gang, that’s what drives it.”

Trained with military weapons, MS-13 warred with security forces in El Salvador, took over neighborhoods and generated one of the world’s worst homicide rates, driving an exodus of immigrants reminiscent of the 1980s. The Salvadoran Supreme Court designated the gang as a terrorist organization in 2015.

The Vulcan task force had about 30 members, including prosecutors, agents and analysts. Its director, John J. Durham, was a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York who had spent a decade pursuing MS-13 cliques on Long Island. Members of the task force worked from bases around the country and traveled to Mexico and Central America.

One of the founding investigators, Newark FBI agent Daniel Brunner, spoke fluent Spanish and had worked gangs for seven years. He became a roving specialist providing expertise, communications intelligence and court transcripts, sometimes in person and sometimes from a distance.

“Our idea was that Vulcan was like a SEAL Team 6, going in to help the different districts build cases,” Brunner, who is now retired, said in an interview.

Vulcan built on the longtime U.S. presence and extensive influence in El Salvador, where the embassy has long funded and trained law enforcement agencies. FBI agents and others were embedded as advisers in police anti-gang and homicide units and worked with prosecution teams led by Attorney General Raúl Melara.

The U.S. task force modeled its strategy on the ones used against Mexican cartels and Colombian narcoguerrillas: Break the power of the MS-13 bosses by extraditing them to face trial and prison in the United States.

On Jan. 14, 2021, six days before the end of the Trump administration, Durham and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray joined acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen when he announced “the highest-reaching and most sweeping indictment targeting MS-13 and its command and control structure in U.S. history.”

Prosecutors charged the 14 members of the leadership council with major crimes including conspiracy to support and finance narcoterrorism. For more than two decades, the Ranfla ran a criminal network in the United States, Mexico and Central America that sanctioned the murders of Americans and trafficked drugs and arms, the indictment alleged.

The indictment contained a stunning charge: MS-13 bosses had taken the extraordinary step of giving an order, or “green light,” to assassinate an FBI agent working with local investigators in El Salvador. Embassy officials learned of the threat and evacuated the agent, according to interviews.

It is highly unusual for Latin American criminal groups to target a U.S. agent — they have learned that it invites an overwhelming law enforcement response. The assassination plot was a sign that the U.S. crackdown had rattled the gang chiefs, current and former officials said.

Family and friends attend the burial of Justin Llivicura in 2017 on Long Island, New York. Justin, a 16-year-old high school student, was one of four teenagers murdered in a park by members of MS-13. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images) Vulcan on the Hunt

In conversations with American officials as president-elect, Bukele promised cooperation and welcomed their support against gangs and graft, even in his own Nuevas Ideas party, according to current and former U.S. officials.

At a press event about the Vulcan task force in 2020, Trump asserted that in the past El Salvador “did not cooperate with the United States at all,” but now it had become a strong law enforcement partner.

Already, though, there had been news accounts alleging that Bukele had cut deals with gangs when he was mayor of San Salvador. Vulcan investigators quickly found evidence that top aides to the new president were negotiating a new pact with gang chiefs, according to interviews.

For more than a decade, MS-13’s control of the streets had made it a political force. It could deliver votes, ignite mayhem or impose order. A series of politicians had held talks with gang leaders to seek electoral support and reductions in violence in return for improved prison conditions and perks such as prostitutes and big-screen televisions.

The Bukele government adopted a more sophisticated bargaining strategy, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. During secret meetings in prisons and other sites, the president’s emissaries offered MS-13 leaders political power and financial incentives if they lowered the homicide rate and marshaled support for the Nuevas Ideas party, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials and court documents.

The chief negotiator was Carlos Marroquín, a former rap artist and confidant of the president. Bukele had appointed him the director of a new Justice Ministry program known as “Reconstruction of the Social Fabric” that operated in impoverished communities.

Marroquín promised the Ranfla a central role in developing the program, control of neighborhood youth centers, power over urban turf and other financial and political benefits, according to current and former U.S. officials, court documents and Treasury Department sanctions. Informants and communications intercepts indicated that some of the resources going to MS-13 came from U.S. government aid, a violation of U.S. law, according to interviews and documents.

“Money was going from us, from USAID, through to this social fabric group,” a former federal law enforcement official said. “They’re supposed to be building things and getting skills and learning. It was funding the gangs.”

Vulcan also gained information from two highly placed Salvadoran officials involved in the talks with MS-13. The officials provided inside information to U.S. agents about the negotiations, which they said Bukele directed, according to interviews.

The accumulating evidence about the gang pact and the suspected misuse of U.S. funds spurred the task force to broaden its initial focus and target alleged corruption in the Bukele government, current and former U.S. officials said.

In April 2021, federal agents prepared a list of powerful Salvadorans for a financial review by the U.S. Treasury Department. Bukele was one of the 15 names. So were Marroquín; Osiris Luna, the director of the national prison system and another alleged organizer of the gang talks; Martha Carolina Recinos, the president’s chief of staff; and other political figures and their relatives. The request asked the Treasury Department to search for possible illicit transactions in any bank accounts held in the United States by those on the list, according to documents seen by ProPublica.

The Vulcan task force was seeking evidence in U.S. banks of money laundering tied to the diversion of USAID funding through the gang pact, the documents showed. Agents explained that the task force had “uncovered information that MS-13 members are in close contact with politically exposed persons in El Salvador,” referring to prominent government figures.

“The USAID funding is believed to have been laundered by the individuals submitted in this request,” who were suspected of “facilitating, supporting and promoting MS-13 through their official positions,” said the request, which was viewed by ProPublica.

Made under section 314A of the USA Patriot Act, the request for a canvass of U.S. banks requires that investigators show reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause, which is a higher standard. The outcome of the request is unknown. The Treasury Department declined to comment. U.S. prosecutors have not publicly accused Bukele and the others of crimes related to USAID funds.

As U.S. investigators advanced in this political direction, they gained valuable information from the Salvadoran prosecutors who were pressing their own investigation of the gangs and the Bukele administration.

Known in English as Operation Cathedral, their probe was as ambitious and sensitive as the U.S. one. Investigators had documented the secret jailhouse deals with MS-13 and the official attempts to cover them up. They also pursued leads that revealed alleged widespread corruption involving the country’s COVID-19 relief programs, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials and documents. Political tensions increased as the Salvadoran prosecutors targeted the president’s inner circle and raided government offices, clashing with police who tried to stop them from searching the Health Ministry in one incident.

April 2021 was also when a delegation led by Attorney General Melara came to Washington to meet with leaders of Vulcan and other senior U.S. officials. The prosecutors laid out their case against prominent figures in the Bukele government. The “impressive” presentation, a former U.S. federal law enforcement official said, cited videos, phone intercepts and other evidence showing that Marroquín, prisons director Luna and others had clandestinely arranged for government negotiators and gang leaders to enter and leave prisons, smuggled in phones and destroyed logs of prison visits.

“Melara was very nervous because of the very high level of the people he was investigating,” a former U.S. federal law enforcement official said.

Melara declined to comment, saying he does not discuss his work as attorney general.

The Salvadoran director of prisons, Osiris Luna, right, speaks at a police facility in San Salvador, El Salvador, in November 2021. (Rodrigo Sura/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) Interference

On May 1, 2021 — soon after Melara and his team met with U.S. investigators — the Salvadoran Legislature, controlled by Bukele, voted to expel the attorney general and five justices on the Supreme Court.

The purge was a decisive step by Bukele to centralize power. It drew international condemnation. In El Salvador, critics denounced the president’s actions as a “self-coup.” On his Twitter page, Bukele began calling himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”

For Vulcan, the expulsions marked a dramatic shift in its investigation. The Supreme Court justices had signaled their willingness to sign off on some extraditions. Melara had been a helpful ally who reportedly pledged to do “everything necessary” to extradite the Ranfla members, many of whom were in custody in El Salvador. But it soon became clear that the government was no longer interested in handing over senior gang leaders.

“The next prosecutors were not willing to work with us,” said Musto, the former HSI official. “We were not closed out, but all these things that we had in place that we were moving to getting people back here slowed down to a snail’s pace.”

The first clash came over Armando Melgar Diaz, an alleged MS-13 leader who acted as a middleman between gangs in the United States and senior leaders in El Salvador. Melgar, known as “Blue,” had ordered the kidnapping of a family in Oklahoma that owed the gangs $145,000, collected money from a drug ring operating out of restaurants in Maryland and Virginia and was involved with killings in the U.S., according to an indictment and interviews with U.S. officials. He was the first MS-13 member to be accused under terrorism laws.

The newly constituted Supreme Court voted to approve Melgar’s extradition but then reversed its decision, announcing that the matter needed further study. Later, Bukele’s new attorney general asked for a halt to the extradition. The reason: The United States had failed to guarantee that it would not seek the death penalty or life in prison, sentences not allowed under Salvadoran law.

The rationale made no sense to Vulcan prosecutors. The Justice Department had already promised that it would not pursue such punishments against Melgar, according to records and interviews. U.S. and Salvadoran officials attributed the sudden reversal to fear that Melgar could link Bukele and his government to the pact with MS-13.

“Melgar Diaz was going to be the test case,” Musto said. “It was going to be an easy win for Vulcan.”

Information obtained by U.S. agents included allegations that Bukele’s judicial adviser, Conan Castro-Ramírez, had called one of the new Supreme Court justices and told him to find ways to stop the extradition of Melgar, according to interviews. When the justice objected, saying that the extradition had already been approved, Castro allegedly ordered him to reverse it. “That’s why we put you there,” he said, according to the interviews.

The State Department sanctioned Castro for his role in assisting in the “inappropriate removal” of the Supreme Court justices and the attorney general. Castro did not respond to attempts to contact him.

A Salvadoran court sentenced Melgar to 39 years in prison for conspiracy to commit homicide, among other crimes. He was the first MS-13 leader whose extradition was blocked. Soon after, the U.S. extradition requests for other gang chiefs ran into opposition.

“Bukele and his government are using the entire state apparatus to prevent these people from being extradited,” a person with knowledge of the Salvadoran judicial system said in a recent interview.

Miguel Ángel Flores Durel, a newly appointed Supreme Court justice who reportedly had served as a lawyer for a top MS-13 leader, made sure that the requests were never granted, according to the person with knowledge of El Salvador’s judicial system. Flores instructed colleagues “do not work on extraditions at all,” the person said.

In July 2022, El Salvador agreed to extradite two lower-ranking MS-13 members charged with the murders of Salvadoran immigrants in Long Island in 2016 and 2017 in which victims were butchered with axes and machetes. The Supreme Court also approved the return of Salvadorans not affiliated with the gang who were accused in the U.S. of crimes such as murder.

This was a deliberate strategy, the person said. Flores said that El Salvador needed to continue some extraditions in order to “calm” U.S. officials, who were complaining about the lack of cooperation with Vulcan, the person said. (Flores died in 2023.)

It didn’t work. The extradition of other criminals by the Bukele-aligned Supreme Court only emphasized the lack of cooperation on requests for the senior MS-13 leaders.

“We were never told officially that it wouldn’t happen, but it became impossible,” said Brunner, the former FBI agent.

In October 2022, Bukele’s new attorney general announced that criminals would first have to serve their sentence in El Salvador before being sent to the U.S. — an interpretation of the country’s extradition treaty that differed from the previous Supreme Court.

“We aren’t going to be sending Salvadorans without them first paying for the crimes they have committed” in El Salvador, Rodolfo Delgado said.

Threats and Roadblocks

The Bukele government’s interference with the U.S. investigation went beyond blocking extraditions, U.S. officials said.

Senior Bukele allies also waged a campaign of harassment and intimidation against the Salvadoran officials who had investigated corruption and assisted the Vulcan task force, according to interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials.

The government threatened officials with arrest and sent police patrols to their homes, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. At least eight senior Salvadoran law enforcement and judicial officials fled El Salvador for the United States and elsewhere. Vulcan provided them with travel money, language classes, housing and help gaining legal immigration status and finding jobs. In one instance, a U.S. Embassy official escorted a Salvadoran prosecutor out of the country because American officials believed his life was in danger, according to an official familiar with the incident.

The Salvadoran government also weakened special “vetted units” of the police that had worked with the FBI and other U.S. agencies, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Bukele’s allies didn’t stop there. They allegedly helped the escape or release from prison of at least four members of the MS-13 leadership council sought by Vulcan for alleged crimes in the U.S., according to interviews, court documents and press reports.

Elmer Canales-Rivera, alias “Crook de Hollywood,” was one of the most wanted of the Ranfla members. He had been imprisoned for several murders in El Salvador, including a case in which he reportedly helped suffocate and drown in insecticide a gang member who violated orders. In the United States, prosecutors had accused him of orchestrating murders and kidnapping across the nation for more than 20 years.

In November 2021, Canales escaped from prison. El Faro, a prominent investigative news outlet, and other Salvadoran media published stories that detailed how Marroquín had escorted Canales from the prison. The articles featured taped calls between gang members and a person identified as Marroquín discussing his role in the escape, along with photos of officials apparently attempting to remove jail logs to conceal their presence at the prison.

Canales was caught in Mexico and turned over to U.S. authorities. Currently in prison awaiting trial, he has pleaded not guilty.

Leaders of the MS-13 street gang read the newspaper after a press conference at La Esperanza jail in San Salvador in 2013. Elmer Canales-Rivera, known as “Crook de Hollywood,” right, allegedly escaped from prison with the help of senior Salvadoran officials in 2021. (Jose Cabezas/AFP via Getty Images)

Over the next several months, three other MS-13 leaders disappeared from Salvadoran prisons, causing Durham, the head of the task force, to express his concern in a letter to the judge in New York overseeing the cases. At the time the Bukele administration had received extradition requests and Interpol notices, he wrote, the leaders had been in custody. Salvadoran media later reported that the country’s Supreme Court had formally denied the extradition requests for the three men.

The purge of the Supreme Court and prosecutors, the blocked extraditions and the disappearance of the MS-13 gang members marked a significant deterioration in relations between Bukele and the administration of President Joe Biden. Agencies across the government began looking for ways to push El Salvador to cooperate.

Acting U.S. Ambassador Jean Manes announced a “pause” in relations with El Salvador and left the country. A veteran diplomat who had previously served in El Salvador, Manes had pressured Bukele in public and private, criticizing the extradition delays and his increasingly authoritarian rule, according to State Department officials.

“What are we seeing now? It is a decline in democracy,” Manes said shortly before her departure.

In December 2021, the Treasury Department issued sanctions against Bukele aides Luna, Marroquín and Recinos, blocking them from conducting financial transactions in the United States because of alleged corruption. None of them responded to questions sent to a Bukele spokesperson.

Nonetheless, former members of the task force said they felt that the Biden administration treated Vulcan as a lower priority and cut its resources. They said Biden officials saw the task force as a Trump initiative and wanted to focus on other law enforcement targets, such as human trafficking.

“As soon as the Biden administration came in, we were slowed down,” Brunner said. “There was a lot more red tape we had to go through.” Former Biden officials denied this was the case.

Whatever truce had existed between the Salvadoran government and MS-13 collapsed in March 2022. The country descended into chaos. Over one three-day period, some 80 people were killed in gang-related violence.

Bukele reacted forcefully. He declared a nationwide “state of exception” that suspended constitutional protections. Police began rounding up thousands of accused gang members and others. He announced the construction of the megaprison known as CECOT.

The policies proved tremendously popular. Murder rates dropped dramatically, though human rights advocates criticized the loss of civil liberties. Bukele dismissed their complaints.

“Some say we have put thousands in prison, but the reality is that we have set millions free,” he has said, an assertion he repeated to Trump in the Oval Office.

The Turnaround

Despite the harsh treatment of gang members — an estimated 14,500 people are now held in CECOT — one thing did not change: The Bukele government continued to refuse to extradite senior MS-13 leaders to the United States.

The reasons for Bukele’s alleged protection of the gang leadership versus his relentless pursuit of the rank and file are the subject of speculation in both the United States and El Salvador. One possible explanation, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials: Bukele is aware that Vulcan was gathering evidence that could lead to criminal charges and political damage. The imprisoned leaders are potential witnesses to his alleged deal with MS-13, while El Salvador’s street-level gangsters are not.

Police escort accused Venezuelans and Salvadorans after their deportation from the United States to be held in the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador. (El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images)

In February 2023, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment for another group of leaders, most of whom operated a tier below the Ranfla, relaying its directives to gangsters on the streets. The 13 defendants were accused of terrorism and drug smuggling, among other charges.

The U.S. announced it would “explore options for their extradition with the government of El Salvador.” The Justice Department declined to say whether any such requests had been made.

In filing the charges, prosecutors made their strongest public accusations yet about deals between the Bukele government and the gangs. Without naming the president or his allies, prosecutors alleged that MS-13 leaders agreed to use their vast political influence to turn out votes for candidates belonging to Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party in legislative elections in 2021.

The gang bosses also “agreed to reduce the number of public murders in El Salvador, which politically benefited the government of El Salvador, by creating the perception that the government was reducing the murder rate,” the indictment said.

As part of the arrangement, the senior MS-13 leaders demanded that the Bukele government refuse to extradite them, the indictment said. The alleged condition appears to be in effect. To date, none of the extradition requests for more than a dozen high-ranking gang members has been approved.

In the face of obstacles, Vulcan relied increasingly on the Mexican government for help. During the past four years, Mexican authorities have captured nine of the 27 MS-13 leaders named in the indictments and deported them to the United States, where they were arrested. This year, prosecutors obtained guilty pleas to terrorism charges from two lower-ranking bosses, including one who prosecutors said had helped implement the deal between the Bukele administration and the gang. Sentencing for the men is pending.

Since Trump took office this year, his administration has redirected Vulcan’s mission to also target Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the president has put in the spotlight.

There has been a remarkable recent development related to MS-13, however. After more than five years leading the Vulcan task force, Durham wrote letters asking the judge overseeing the cases to dismiss charges against two gang leaders in U.S. custody, allowing them to be deported to El Salvador. The letters were dated March 11 and April 1, weeks after the Trump administration began negotiating the mass deportation deal with Bukele’s government.

César Humberto López Larios, a member of the Ranfla known as “Greñas,” had his charges dismissed and was returned to El Salvador with more than 250 Venezuelans and Salvadorans sent to CECOT as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation of migrants on March 15. López, identified in media reports, is featured in a slickly produced video posted by Bukele on X, kneeling in the prison, his head shaved. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Then, in April, Durham asked for the dismissal of terrorism charges against a lower-ranking MS-13 prisoner, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, alias “Vampiro,” according to recently unsealed court records. His defense lawyers are seeking to stall the request to give them time to fight his deportation to El Salvador. He has pleaded not guilty.

Durham acknowledged in his letters to the judge that the evidence against the two men is “strong.” After millions spent on an operation involving investigators and prosecutors from the U.S., El Salvador and other countries, Vulcan had amassed a trove of evidence aimed at incarcerating the MS-13 leaders who had overseen the killings, rapes and beatings of Americans. Prosecutors told defense attorneys they had more than 92,903 pages of discovery, including 600 pages of transcribed phone intercepts, 21 boxes of documents from prosecutors in El Salvador and 11 gigabytes of audio files.

Durham said prosecutors were dropping their pursuit of the cases “due to geopolitical and national security concerns.”

It was like a reverse extradition. Trump was giving Bukele the kind of high-level criminals that the United States had never received from El Salvador.

During the negotiations over the use of El Salvador’s prison, Trump officials agreed to pay some $6 million to house the deported men and acceded to an additional demand.

Bukele had one specific request, according to Milena Mayorga, his ambassador to the United States.

“I want you to send me the gang leaders who are in the United States,” she quoted Bukele as telling U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

For Bukele, she said in a broadcast interview, it was “a matter of honor.”

Mica Rosenberg contributed reporting, and Doris Burke contributed research.

by T. Christian Miller and Sebastian Rotella

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In mid-April, President Donald Trump sat down in the Oval Office with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to celebrate a new partnership. They had recently negotiated an extraordinary deal in which El Salvador agreed to incarcerate in a maximum security prison hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants that the Trump administration had labeled as violent criminals, though few had been convicted of such crimes. The U.S. also sent back accused members of the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13 — which both the U.S. and El Salvador have designated as a terrorist organization.

Bukele’s presidency has been defined by his successful crackdown against MS-13. He has jailed tens of thousands of alleged gang members, transforming one of the hemisphere’s most dangerous nations into one of its safest. Although human rights groups have criticized his tactics, Bukele remains extremely popular in El Salvador.

During their meeting at the White House, Trump praised his guest as “one hell of a president.” He shook Bukele’s hand, saying, “We appreciate working with you because you want to stop crime and so do we.”

A long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered evidence at odds with Bukele’s reputation as a crime fighter. The inquiry, which began as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership, expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with MS-13 in the early years of his presidency.

New reporting on that investigation by ProPublica shows that senior officials in Bukele’s government repeatedly impeded the work of a U.S. task force as it pursued evidence of possible wrongdoing by the Salvadoran president and his inner circle.

Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force, according to exclusive interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials, newly obtained internal documents and court records from both countries.

In a previously unreported development, federal agents came to suspect that Bukele and members of his inner circle had diverted U.S. aid funds to the gang as part of the alleged deal to provide it with money and power in exchange for votes and reduced homicide rates. In 2021, agents drew up a request to review U.S. bank accounts held by Salvadoran political figures to look for evidence of money laundering related to the suspected diversion of U.S. funds. The list of names assembled by the agents included Bukele, senior officials and their relatives, according to documents viewed by ProPublica.

“Information obtained through investigation has revealed that the individuals contained within this submission are heavily engaged with MS-13 and are laundering funds from illicit business where MS-13 are involved,” the agents wrote. The people on the list “are also believed to have been funding MS-13 to support political campaigns and MS-13 have received political funds.”

The outcome of the request is not known, but its existence shows that the U.S. investigation had widened to examine suspected corruption at high levels of the Bukele government.

The investigation was led by Joint Task Force Vulcan, a multiagency law enforcement team created at Trump’s request in 2019. Agents found evidence that the Bukele government tried to cover up the pact by preventing the extraditions of gang leaders who faced U.S. charges that include ordering the murders of U.S. citizens and plotting to assassinate an FBI agent.

In addition, U.S. officials helped at least eight of their counterparts in Salvadoran law enforcement flee the country and resettle in the United States or elsewhere because they feared retaliation by their own government, current and former U.S. officials said.

It has been clear from the beginning what Trump wants from El Salvador: an ally who would accept, and even imprison, deportees. Less clear has been what Bukele might want from the United States. In striking the deal with the Salvadoran president, Trump has effectively undercut the Vulcan investigation and shielded Bukele from further scrutiny, current and former U.S. officials said.

Veterans of the Vulcan team are “concerned that all their work, the millions of dollars that were spent, going all over the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, that it will be weakened for political reasons,” said a U.S. official familiar with the investigation.

The task force worked closely with the Salvadoran attorney general’s office, whose prosecutors shared evidence from their own investigation of the gang negotiations and suspected graft in the Bukele government, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials.

“There was good information on corruption between the gang and the Bukele administration,” Christopher Musto, a former senior official at Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, who worked on Vulcan, said about the Salvadoran investigation. “It was a great case.”

In May 2021, Bukele’s legislative majority in Congress ousted the attorney general and justices of the Supreme Court, which oversees extradition requests. Within seven months, newly installed justices reversed or halted six requests for senior gang leaders wanted in the U.S., according to interviews and documents.

“Bukele’s people were coming to the Supreme Court and saying under no circumstances are we extraditing the MS-13 leaders,” said the U.S. official familiar with the investigation. “‘Delay, interfere, undermine, do what you have to do.’”

Senior Bukele officials helped an MS-13 leader with a pending extradition order escape from prison, according to court records, U.S. officials and Salvadoran news reports. At least three other top gang leaders were released from Salvadoran custody after the U.S. filed extradition requests for them, according to Justice Department documents.

Published accounts in the United States and El Salvador have reported allegations that Bukele also pushed for the return of MS-13 leaders to prevent them from testifying in U.S. courts about the pact. Despite his government’s refusal to extradite gang bosses to the United States, the Trump administration in March deported one MS-13 leader accused of terrorism. The Justice Department is now seeking to dismiss charges against a second leader, which would allow him to be sent back to El Salvador, according to recent court filings.

The Justice Department declined to comment in response to questions sent by ProPublica. The State Department referred questions to the Justice Department.

A White House spokesperson did not respond to detailed questions.

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises to the American people and removing dangerous criminals and terrorist illegals who pose a threat to the American public,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson. “We are grateful for President Bukele’s partnership.”

Bukele, the Salvadoran Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Salvadoran Supreme Court did not respond to lists of questions. Bukele has repeatedly denied making any agreement with MS-13. The Trump administration’s deportation of MS-13 members to El Salvador, he said in a post on X, will enable security forces to dismantle the gang.

“This will help us finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators, and sponsors,” the post said.

President Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, during a meeting in the Oval Office in April 2025. Trump has praised Bukele as “one hell of a president.” (Al Drago/The Washington Post/Getty Images) “Just Fear”

Bukele was elected president of El Salvador in February 2019, promising to fight the country’s ingrained political corruption and pervasive gang violence, which he called “one of the greatest challenges” facing the nation.

During his first term, Trump also made MS-13 a high-profile foe, calling it “probably the meanest, worst gang in the world.” In August 2019, Attorney General William P. Barr created the Vulcan task force, teaming federal prosecutors with agents of the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies. The goal: Eradicate MS-13.

For decades, MS-13 has bedeviled law enforcement in the Americas with its vast reach, extreme violence and complex culture. The initials stand for “Mara Salvatrucha.” “Mara” means a swarm, while “salvatrucha” has been said to refer to a clever Salvadoran, according to interviews and an academic study. The number represents the 13th letter of the alphabet, M, in homage to the Mexican Mafia, the powerful Southern California prison gang.

MS-13 emerged in the 1980s in Los Angeles among Salvadoran youths whose families had fled a bloody civil war. The gang expanded throughout the diaspora and, as the U.S. deported planeloads of ex-convicts starting in the 1990s, took root in El Salvador. Although most of the leaders were serving sentences in El Salvador, a jailhouse council of 14 bosses, known as the “Ranfla,” used cellphones to micromanage criminal activities in U.S. cities thousands of miles away.

The gang developed a reputation for torturing, brutalizing and dismembering its victims. Barr has called it “a death cult” in which violence is more important than riches.

“It was like a very violent mom-and-pop operation where the cousins and second cousins all want to be a part of it,” said Carlos Ortiz, who served as the HSI attaché in El Salvador from 2018 to 2024. “Minimal money, compared to others. Even though it’s an organization, a lot of it is just fear. Fear of the high-ranking bosses among the rest of the gang, that’s what drives it.”

Trained with military weapons, MS-13 warred with security forces in El Salvador, took over neighborhoods and generated one of the world’s worst homicide rates, driving an exodus of immigrants reminiscent of the 1980s. The Salvadoran Supreme Court designated the gang as a terrorist organization in 2015.

The Vulcan task force had about 30 members, including prosecutors, agents and analysts. Its director, John J. Durham, was a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York who had spent a decade pursuing MS-13 cliques on Long Island. Members of the task force worked from bases around the country and traveled to Mexico and Central America.

One of the founding investigators, Newark FBI agent Daniel Brunner, spoke fluent Spanish and had worked gangs for seven years. He became a roving specialist providing expertise, communications intelligence and court transcripts, sometimes in person and sometimes from a distance.

“Our idea was that Vulcan was like a SEAL Team 6, going in to help the different districts build cases,” Brunner, who is now retired, said in an interview.

Vulcan built on the longtime U.S. presence and extensive influence in El Salvador, where the embassy has long funded and trained law enforcement agencies. FBI agents and others were embedded as advisers in police anti-gang and homicide units and worked with prosecution teams led by Attorney General Raúl Melara.

The U.S. task force modeled its strategy on the ones used against Mexican cartels and Colombian narcoguerrillas: Break the power of the MS-13 bosses by extraditing them to face trial and prison in the United States.

On Jan. 14, 2021, six days before the end of the Trump administration, Durham and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray joined acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen when he announced “the highest-reaching and most sweeping indictment targeting MS-13 and its command and control structure in U.S. history.”

Prosecutors charged the 14 members of the leadership council with major crimes including conspiracy to support and finance narcoterrorism. For more than two decades, the Ranfla ran a criminal network in the United States, Mexico and Central America that sanctioned the murders of Americans and trafficked drugs and arms, the indictment alleged.

The indictment contained a stunning charge: MS-13 bosses had taken the extraordinary step of giving an order, or “green light,” to assassinate an FBI agent working with local investigators in El Salvador. Embassy officials learned of the threat and evacuated the agent, according to interviews.

It is highly unusual for Latin American criminal groups to target a U.S. agent — they have learned that it invites an overwhelming law enforcement response. The assassination plot was a sign that the U.S. crackdown had rattled the gang chiefs, current and former officials said.

Family and friends attend the burial of Justin Llivicura in 2017 on Long Island, New York. Justin, a 16-year-old high school student, was one of four teenagers murdered in a park by members of MS-13. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images) Vulcan on the Hunt

In conversations with American officials as president-elect, Bukele promised cooperation and welcomed their support against gangs and graft, even in his own Nuevas Ideas party, according to current and former U.S. officials.

At a press event about the Vulcan task force in 2020, Trump asserted that in the past El Salvador “did not cooperate with the United States at all,” but now it had become a strong law enforcement partner.

Already, though, there had been news accounts alleging that Bukele had cut deals with gangs when he was mayor of San Salvador. Vulcan investigators quickly found evidence that top aides to the new president were negotiating a new pact with gang chiefs, according to interviews.

For more than a decade, MS-13’s control of the streets had made it a political force. It could deliver votes, ignite mayhem or impose order. A series of politicians had held talks with gang leaders to seek electoral support and reductions in violence in return for improved prison conditions and perks such as prostitutes and big-screen televisions.

The Bukele government adopted a more sophisticated bargaining strategy, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. During secret meetings in prisons and other sites, the president’s emissaries offered MS-13 leaders political power and financial incentives if they lowered the homicide rate and marshaled support for the Nuevas Ideas party, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials and court documents.

The chief negotiator was Carlos Marroquín, a former rap artist and confidant of the president. Bukele had appointed him the director of a new Justice Ministry program known as “Reconstruction of the Social Fabric” that operated in impoverished communities.

Marroquín promised the Ranfla a central role in developing the program, control of neighborhood youth centers, power over urban turf and other financial and political benefits, according to current and former U.S. officials, court documents and Treasury Department sanctions. Informants and communications intercepts indicated that some of the resources going to MS-13 came from U.S. government aid, a violation of U.S. law, according to interviews and documents.

“Money was going from us, from USAID, through to this social fabric group,” a former federal law enforcement official said. “They’re supposed to be building things and getting skills and learning. It was funding the gangs.”

Vulcan also gained information from two highly placed Salvadoran officials involved in the talks with MS-13. The officials provided inside information to U.S. agents about the negotiations, which they said Bukele directed, according to interviews.

The accumulating evidence about the gang pact and the suspected misuse of U.S. funds spurred the task force to broaden its initial focus and target alleged corruption in the Bukele government, current and former U.S. officials said.

In April 2021, federal agents prepared a list of powerful Salvadorans for a financial review by the U.S. Treasury Department. Bukele was one of the 15 names. So were Marroquín; Osiris Luna, the director of the national prison system and another alleged organizer of the gang talks; Martha Carolina Recinos, the president’s chief of staff; and other political figures and their relatives. The request asked the Treasury Department to search for possible illicit transactions in any bank accounts held in the United States by those on the list, according to documents seen by ProPublica.

The Vulcan task force was seeking evidence in U.S. banks of money laundering tied to the diversion of USAID funding through the gang pact, the documents showed. Agents explained that the task force had “uncovered information that MS-13 members are in close contact with politically exposed persons in El Salvador,” referring to prominent government figures.

“The USAID funding is believed to have been laundered by the individuals submitted in this request,” who were suspected of “facilitating, supporting and promoting MS-13 through their official positions,” said the request, which was viewed by ProPublica.

Made under section 314A of the USA Patriot Act, the request for a canvass of U.S. banks requires that investigators show reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause, which is a higher standard. The outcome of the request is unknown. The Treasury Department declined to comment. U.S. prosecutors have not publicly accused Bukele and the others of crimes related to USAID funds.

As U.S. investigators advanced in this political direction, they gained valuable information from the Salvadoran prosecutors who were pressing their own investigation of the gangs and the Bukele administration.

Known in English as Operation Cathedral, their probe was as ambitious and sensitive as the U.S. one. Investigators had documented the secret jailhouse deals with MS-13 and the official attempts to cover them up. They also pursued leads that revealed alleged widespread corruption involving the country’s COVID-19 relief programs, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials and documents. Political tensions increased as the Salvadoran prosecutors targeted the president’s inner circle and raided government offices, clashing with police who tried to stop them from searching the Health Ministry in one incident.

April 2021 was also when a delegation led by Attorney General Melara came to Washington to meet with leaders of Vulcan and other senior U.S. officials. The prosecutors laid out their case against prominent figures in the Bukele government. The “impressive” presentation, a former U.S. federal law enforcement official said, cited videos, phone intercepts and other evidence showing that Marroquín, prisons director Luna and others had clandestinely arranged for government negotiators and gang leaders to enter and leave prisons, smuggled in phones and destroyed logs of prison visits.

“Melara was very nervous because of the very high level of the people he was investigating,” a former U.S. federal law enforcement official said.

Melara declined to comment, saying he does not discuss his work as attorney general.

The Salvadoran director of prisons, Osiris Luna, right, speaks at a police facility in San Salvador, El Salvador, in November 2021. (Rodrigo Sura/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) Interference

On May 1, 2021 — soon after Melara and his team met with U.S. investigators — the Salvadoran Legislature, controlled by Bukele, voted to expel the attorney general and five justices on the Supreme Court.

The purge was a decisive step by Bukele to centralize power. It drew international condemnation. In El Salvador, critics denounced the president’s actions as a “self-coup.” On his Twitter page, Bukele began calling himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”

For Vulcan, the expulsions marked a dramatic shift in its investigation. The Supreme Court justices had signaled their willingness to sign off on some extraditions. Melara had been a helpful ally who reportedly pledged to do “everything necessary” to extradite the Ranfla members, many of whom were in custody in El Salvador. But it soon became clear that the government was no longer interested in handing over senior gang leaders.

“The next prosecutors were not willing to work with us,” said Musto, the former HSI official. “We were not closed out, but all these things that we had in place that we were moving to getting people back here slowed down to a snail’s pace.”

The first clash came over Armando Melgar Diaz, an alleged MS-13 leader who acted as a middleman between gangs in the United States and senior leaders in El Salvador. Melgar, known as “Blue,” had ordered the kidnapping of a family in Oklahoma that owed the gangs $145,000, collected money from a drug ring operating out of restaurants in Maryland and Virginia and was involved with killings in the U.S., according to an indictment and interviews with U.S. officials. He was the first MS-13 member to be accused under terrorism laws.

The newly constituted Supreme Court voted to approve Melgar’s extradition but then reversed its decision, announcing that the matter needed further study. Later, Bukele’s new attorney general asked for a halt to the extradition. The reason: The United States had failed to guarantee that it would not seek the death penalty or life in prison, sentences not allowed under Salvadoran law.

The rationale made no sense to Vulcan prosecutors. The Justice Department had already promised that it would not pursue such punishments against Melgar, according to records and interviews. U.S. and Salvadoran officials attributed the sudden reversal to fear that Melgar could link Bukele and his government to the pact with MS-13.

“Melgar Diaz was going to be the test case,” Musto said. “It was going to be an easy win for Vulcan.”

Information obtained by U.S. agents included allegations that Bukele’s judicial adviser, Conan Castro-Ramírez, had called one of the new Supreme Court justices and told him to find ways to stop the extradition of Melgar, according to interviews. When the justice objected, saying that the extradition had already been approved, Castro allegedly ordered him to reverse it. “That’s why we put you there,” he said, according to the interviews.

The State Department sanctioned Castro for his role in assisting in the “inappropriate removal” of the Supreme Court justices and the attorney general. Castro did not respond to attempts to contact him.

A Salvadoran court sentenced Melgar to 39 years in prison for conspiracy to commit homicide, among other crimes. He was the first MS-13 leader whose extradition was blocked. Soon after, the U.S. extradition requests for other gang chiefs ran into opposition.

“Bukele and his government are using the entire state apparatus to prevent these people from being extradited,” a person with knowledge of the Salvadoran judicial system said in a recent interview.

Miguel Ángel Flores Durel, a newly appointed Supreme Court justice who reportedly had served as a lawyer for a top MS-13 leader, made sure that the requests were never granted, according to the person with knowledge of El Salvador’s judicial system. Flores instructed colleagues “do not work on extraditions at all,” the person said.

In July 2022, El Salvador agreed to extradite two lower-ranking MS-13 members charged with the murders of Salvadoran immigrants in Long Island in 2016 and 2017 in which victims were butchered with axes and machetes. The Supreme Court also approved the return of Salvadorans not affiliated with the gang who were accused in the U.S. of crimes such as murder.

This was a deliberate strategy, the person said. Flores said that El Salvador needed to continue some extraditions in order to “calm” U.S. officials, who were complaining about the lack of cooperation with Vulcan, the person said. (Flores died in 2023.)

It didn’t work. The extradition of other criminals by the Bukele-aligned Supreme Court only emphasized the lack of cooperation on requests for the senior MS-13 leaders.

“We were never told officially that it wouldn’t happen, but it became impossible,” said Brunner, the former FBI agent.

In October 2022, Bukele’s new attorney general announced that criminals would first have to serve their sentence in El Salvador before being sent to the U.S. — an interpretation of the country’s extradition treaty that differed from the previous Supreme Court.

“We aren’t going to be sending Salvadorans without them first paying for the crimes they have committed” in El Salvador, Rodolfo Delgado said.

Threats and Roadblocks

The Bukele government’s interference with the U.S. investigation went beyond blocking extraditions, U.S. officials said.

Senior Bukele allies also waged a campaign of harassment and intimidation against the Salvadoran officials who had investigated corruption and assisted the Vulcan task force, according to interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials.

The government threatened officials with arrest and sent police patrols to their homes, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. At least eight senior Salvadoran law enforcement and judicial officials fled El Salvador for the United States and elsewhere. Vulcan provided them with travel money, language classes, housing and help gaining legal immigration status and finding jobs. In one instance, a U.S. Embassy official escorted a Salvadoran prosecutor out of the country because American officials believed his life was in danger, according to an official familiar with the incident.

The Salvadoran government also weakened special “vetted units” of the police that had worked with the FBI and other U.S. agencies, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Bukele’s allies didn’t stop there. They allegedly helped the escape or release from prison of at least four members of the MS-13 leadership council sought by Vulcan for alleged crimes in the U.S., according to interviews, court documents and press reports.

Elmer Canales-Rivera, alias “Crook de Hollywood,” was one of the most wanted of the Ranfla members. He had been imprisoned for several murders in El Salvador, including a case in which he reportedly helped suffocate and drown in insecticide a gang member who violated orders. In the United States, prosecutors had accused him of orchestrating murders and kidnapping across the nation for more than 20 years.

In November 2021, Canales escaped from prison. El Faro, a prominent investigative news outlet, and other Salvadoran media published stories that detailed how Marroquín had escorted Canales from the prison. The articles featured taped calls between gang members and a person identified as Marroquín discussing his role in the escape, along with photos of officials apparently attempting to remove jail logs to conceal their presence at the prison.

Canales was caught in Mexico and turned over to U.S. authorities. Currently in prison awaiting trial, he has pleaded not guilty.

Leaders of the MS-13 street gang read the newspaper after a press conference at La Esperanza jail in San Salvador in 2013. Elmer Canales-Rivera, known as “Crook de Hollywood,” right, allegedly escaped from prison with the help of senior Salvadoran officials in 2021. (Jose Cabezas/AFP via Getty Images)

Over the next several months, three other MS-13 leaders disappeared from Salvadoran prisons, causing Durham, the head of the task force, to express his concern in a letter to the judge in New York overseeing the cases. At the time the Bukele administration had received extradition requests and Interpol notices, he wrote, the leaders had been in custody. Salvadoran media later reported that the country’s Supreme Court had formally denied the extradition requests for the three men.

The purge of the Supreme Court and prosecutors, the blocked extraditions and the disappearance of the MS-13 gang members marked a significant deterioration in relations between Bukele and the administration of President Joe Biden. Agencies across the government began looking for ways to push El Salvador to cooperate.

Acting U.S. Ambassador Jean Manes announced a “pause” in relations with El Salvador and left the country. A veteran diplomat who had previously served in El Salvador, Manes had pressured Bukele in public and private, criticizing the extradition delays and his increasingly authoritarian rule, according to State Department officials.

“What are we seeing now? It is a decline in democracy,” Manes said shortly before her departure.

In December 2021, the Treasury Department issued sanctions against Bukele aides Luna, Marroquín and Recinos, blocking them from conducting financial transactions in the United States because of alleged corruption. None of them responded to questions sent to a Bukele spokesperson.

Nonetheless, former members of the task force said they felt that the Biden administration treated Vulcan as a lower priority and cut its resources. They said Biden officials saw the task force as a Trump initiative and wanted to focus on other law enforcement targets, such as human trafficking.

“As soon as the Biden administration came in, we were slowed down,” Brunner said. “There was a lot more red tape we had to go through.” Former Biden officials denied this was the case.

Whatever truce had existed between the Salvadoran government and MS-13 collapsed in March 2022. The country descended into chaos. Over one three-day period, some 80 people were killed in gang-related violence.

Bukele reacted forcefully. He declared a nationwide “state of exception” that suspended constitutional protections. Police began rounding up thousands of accused gang members and others. He announced the construction of the megaprison known as CECOT.

The policies proved tremendously popular. Murder rates dropped dramatically, though human rights advocates criticized the loss of civil liberties. Bukele dismissed their complaints.

“Some say we have put thousands in prison, but the reality is that we have set millions free,” he has said, an assertion he repeated to Trump in the Oval Office.

The Turnaround

Despite the harsh treatment of gang members — an estimated 14,500 people are now held in CECOT — one thing did not change: The Bukele government continued to refuse to extradite senior MS-13 leaders to the United States.

The reasons for Bukele’s alleged protection of the gang leadership versus his relentless pursuit of the rank and file are the subject of speculation in both the United States and El Salvador. One possible explanation, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials: Bukele is aware that Vulcan was gathering evidence that could lead to criminal charges and political damage. The imprisoned leaders are potential witnesses to his alleged deal with MS-13, while El Salvador’s street-level gangsters are not.

Police escort accused Venezuelans and Salvadorans after their deportation from the United States to be held in the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador. (El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images)

In February 2023, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment for another group of leaders, most of whom operated a tier below the Ranfla, relaying its directives to gangsters on the streets. The 13 defendants were accused of terrorism and drug smuggling, among other charges.

The U.S. announced it would “explore options for their extradition with the government of El Salvador.” The Justice Department declined to say whether any such requests had been made.

In filing the charges, prosecutors made their strongest public accusations yet about deals between the Bukele government and the gangs. Without naming the president or his allies, prosecutors alleged that MS-13 leaders agreed to use their vast political influence to turn out votes for candidates belonging to Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party in legislative elections in 2021.

The gang bosses also “agreed to reduce the number of public murders in El Salvador, which politically benefited the government of El Salvador, by creating the perception that the government was reducing the murder rate,” the indictment said.

As part of the arrangement, the senior MS-13 leaders demanded that the Bukele government refuse to extradite them, the indictment said. The alleged condition appears to be in effect. To date, none of the extradition requests for more than a dozen high-ranking gang members has been approved.

In the face of obstacles, Vulcan relied increasingly on the Mexican government for help. During the past four years, Mexican authorities have captured nine of the 27 MS-13 leaders named in the indictments and deported them to the United States, where they were arrested. This year, prosecutors obtained guilty pleas to terrorism charges from two lower-ranking bosses, including one who prosecutors said had helped implement the deal between the Bukele administration and the gang. Sentencing for the men is pending.

Since Trump took office this year, his administration has redirected Vulcan’s mission to also target Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the president has put in the spotlight.

There has been a remarkable recent development related to MS-13, however. After more than five years leading the Vulcan task force, Durham wrote letters asking the judge overseeing the cases to dismiss charges against two gang leaders in U.S. custody, allowing them to be deported to El Salvador. The letters were dated March 11 and April 1, weeks after the Trump administration began negotiating the mass deportation deal with Bukele’s government.

César Humberto López Larios, a member of the Ranfla known as “Greñas,” had his charges dismissed and was returned to El Salvador with more than 250 Venezuelans and Salvadorans sent to CECOT as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation of migrants on March 15. López, identified in media reports, is featured in a slickly produced video posted by Bukele on X, kneeling in the prison, his head shaved. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Then, in April, Durham asked for the dismissal of terrorism charges against a lower-ranking MS-13 prisoner, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, alias “Vampiro,” according to recently unsealed court records. His defense lawyers are seeking to stall the request to give them time to fight his deportation to El Salvador. He has pleaded not guilty.

Durham acknowledged in his letters to the judge that the evidence against the two men is “strong.” After millions spent on an operation involving investigators and prosecutors from the U.S., El Salvador and other countries, Vulcan had amassed a trove of evidence aimed at incarcerating the MS-13 leaders who had overseen the killings, rapes and beatings of Americans. Prosecutors told defense attorneys they had more than 92,903 pages of discovery, including 600 pages of transcribed phone intercepts, 21 boxes of documents from prosecutors in El Salvador and 11 gigabytes of audio files.

Durham said prosecutors were dropping their pursuit of the cases “due to geopolitical and national security concerns.”

It was like a reverse extradition. Trump was giving Bukele the kind of high-level criminals that the United States had never received from El Salvador.

During the negotiations over the use of El Salvador’s prison, Trump officials agreed to pay some $6 million to house the deported men and acceded to an additional demand.

Bukele had one specific request, according to Milena Mayorga, his ambassador to the United States.

“I want you to send me the gang leaders who are in the United States,” she quoted Bukele as telling U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

For Bukele, she said in a broadcast interview, it was “a matter of honor.”

Mica Rosenberg contributed reporting, and Doris Burke contributed research.

by ProPublica

ProPublica announced on Wednesday a new call for proposals to select the next five partners in its Local Reporting Network. These newsrooms will be chosen to be part of the organization’s 50 State Initiative, a commitment to partnering with one newsroom from each state by 2029. The deadline for applications is July 21 at 5 p.m. Eastern. Reporters selected for the one-year program will begin work on Oct. 1, 2025.

Through this partnership, ProPublica will reimburse news organizations for the salary of the selected reporter (up to $75,000 plus a benefits stipend) so they can spend a year working full time on an accountability journalism project of importance to their communities. Additionally, ProPublica provides editing support, along with our data, research, visual storytelling, graphics, design, audience and engagement expertise.

More information about how to apply and the application for prospective newsrooms have just been posted. Newsrooms from 35 states are eligible to apply for this round. Please see our eligibility map for details.

As part of the 50 State Initiative, ProPublica is currently working with newsrooms from the first 10 states; another five newsrooms will start in July. Reporting with The Connecticut Mirror on car towing in the state sparked legislative reforms to overhaul century-old towing laws that favored tow companies at the expense of drivers. In Georgia, we have documented how the state’s Medicaid work requirement, which is being heralded as a model for the rest of the country, has fallen short and cost millions. And in Tennessee, we’ve shown how one company has vastly expanded the use of a unique high-interest loan — and then gone on to sue more than 100,000 borrowers.

“It’s thrilling to see ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network reach newsrooms in all regions of the country,” said Sarah Blustain, an assistant managing editor at ProPublica. “With each additional state, we are able to bring urgent local issues to readers nationwide.”

The 50 State Initiative expands the scope of ProPublica’s work at the local and regional level, which includes a growing team of journalists reporting from communities across the country and groundbreaking partnerships with local news organizations through the LRN program.

The initiative broadens our support for local journalism, which now includes the LRN alongside dedicated reporting hubs in the Midwest, South, Southwest and Northwest, as well as an investigative unit in Texas in partnership with The Texas Tribune. ProPublica has more than 25 staff reporters and more than 20 reporting partnerships around the country contributing to regional and local accountability reporting, ensuring people can benefit from world-class journalism that can drive measurable change in their communities.

The LRN began in January 2018 in an effort to help remedy the lack of investigative reporting at the local level. It has since led to partnerships with some 80 news organizations across the country.

by Brandon Roberts and Vernal Coleman

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

What Happened: A trio of lawmakers demanded transparency from the Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday, saying the Trump administration continues to “stonewall” requests for details on the agency’s recent cancellation of hundreds of service contracts.

The group, which included Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Angus King, as well as Rep. Mark Takano, said that despite repeated requests, the agency has disclosed incomplete and inaccurate lists that failed to specify exactly which contracts have been canceled. Blumenthal and Takano are Democrats, and King is an independent. They made their comments at a special forum in Washington.

A review by the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs identified 655 contracts canceled by the VA, where previous lists disclosed by the agency included dozens less and contained significant errors.

The lawmakers cited a recent ProPublica investigation into the agency’s use of a flawed artificial intelligence tool to assess VA contracts. That analysis was conducted by a staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency with no health care or government experience. The VA uses contractors for a range of services, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.

What They Said: Lists of contracts previously disclosed to the committee are “gobbledygook” and filled with errors, the lawmakers said. “This hearing shouldn’t even be necessary,” said King, who sits on the VA oversight committee. “The simplest thing is to send us a list.”

Senators highlighted the harm caused by canceling the contracts, including one that resolved glitches between VA systems preventing veterans from receiving benefits. Without this contract, said Benjamin Ambrose, whose job it was to resolve these errors, there is nobody left at VA to do this work. “In this case veterans are being locked out forever,” he said.

Scott Amey, general counsel with the bipartisan Project on Government Oversight, said: “There’s a lot of fallout. There’s a lot of dominoes that go with canceling just one contract.”

Amey expressed doubt that the necessary work was done to ensure canceled contracts were duplicative or wasteful. “From the stonewalling that we’ve heard from the VA, you can’t have any confidence that that work was done,” he said.

The lawmakers also questioned the VA’s use of AI to assess contracts for possible cancellation, referring to ProPublica’s investigation. Blumenthal said AI holds promise, but it “has to be used thoughtfully.”

Background: ProPublica reported on Friday that the VA used an error-prone AI tool to identify contracts for possible cancellation. The tool, written by former DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia, used outdated AI models to “munch” contracts based on conflicting instructions and produced glaring mistakes, a ProPublica analysis found.

Experts in AI and government procurement agreed that the DOGE analysis of VA contracts was flawed, with one calling it “deeply problematic.” Lavingia acknowledged that there were problems. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”

ProPublica identified at least two dozen contracts on DOGE’s list that have been canceled so far. Among them is a service agreement to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was with Columbia University for blood sample analysis to support a VA research project. Others still were related to addressing nursing issues, including one to develop social media tools to recruit nursing staff and another to help assess and improve the care they provide.

Democrats in Congress have been seeking more information from the VA on the canceled contracts in an attempt to assess whether the cuts have put veterans’ well-being in jeopardy.

Response: VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz has defended DOGE’s work on reviewing contracts, saying that the vetting sets a “commonsense precedent.” He and Lavingia have said that VA staffers reviewed everything on the DOGE “munchable” list before deciding which contracts to cut.

In a statement on Tuesday, Kasperowicz said that the agency’s contract review has been a careful process aimed at benefiting veterans and using taxpayer money efficiently. “Decisions to keep, cut or descope contracts are based on careful and methodical multilevel reviews by VA employees, including career subject-matter experts who are responsible for the contracts, as well as VA senior leaders and contracting officials,” he said.

He disputed any suggestion from legislators that the contract review might diminish essential services. “Terminating or not renewing these contracts will not negatively affect veteran care, benefits or services,” he said. “In fact, these decisions will allow VA to redirect billions of dollars back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries.”

Why It Matters: Over 9 million veterans across the U.S. rely on the VA for health care through its network of 170 hospitals and 1,200 clinics. One of the nation’s largest health care providers, it is a training ground for doctors and nurses and an engine for medical research. Since returning to office in January, the Trump administration has set about a massive overhaul of the agency, seeking an increase in its overall budget while announcing layoffs that could claim the jobs of around 80,000 employees.

The VA is examining all of its estimated 76,000 contracts as part of that overhaul and in accordance with the Trump administration’s push towards tech. ProPublica’s analysis identified over 2,000 contracts flagged by AI for termination. It’s unclear how many more from that list are on track for cancellation. The Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box.

by K. Rambo, Street Roots

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Street Roots. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

As the city of Portland, Oregon, clawed its way out of the pandemic, it faced a new set of crises: The city’s homeless population was growing. Tents lined some city blocks. High-powered business associations held press conferences demanding the city remove homeless people and touted self-funded surveys saying that without action, businesses and residents would flee the city.

By late spring 2021, the city committed to a new strategy that then-Mayor Ted Wheeler said would “reprioritize public health and safety among homeless Portlanders,” ultimately allocating $1.3 billion by the end of 2024.

But although the city spent roughly $200,000 per homeless resident throughout that time, deaths of homeless people recorded in the county quadrupled, climbing from 113 in 2019 to more than 450 in 2023, according to the most recent data from the Multnomah County Health Department. The rise in deaths far outpaces the growth in the homeless population, which was recorded at 6,300 by a 2023 county census, a number most agree is an undercount. The county began including newly available state death records in its 2022 report, which added about 60 deaths to the yearly tolls.

Homeless residents of Multnomah County now die at a higher rate than in any major West Coast county with available homeless mortality data: more than twice the rate of those in Los Angeles County and the Washington state county containing Seattle. Almost all the homeless population in Multnomah County lives within Portland city limits.

These deaths came during the same period that Portland began a two-pronged response to public pressure over homelessness. City leaders began moving homeless people out of public view by removing tents at a rate far surpassing those of its West Coast peers. Since 2021, it carried out 19,000 sweeps, and it dismantled over 20 encampments per day in 2024, according to city records.

At the same time, the city reduced money for stable permanent housing while dramatically increasing its investment in temporary shelters. The city spent $19.4 million to house formerly homeless Portlanders in 2019, according to the city budget. By 2024, the city budgeted $4.3 million, which housed 391 people.

These moves have been echoed in Trump administration policy, which has prioritized the forced removal of homeless people from encampments and public spaces. For decades prior, the federal government’s position emphasized stable housing.

Researchers from four universities told Street Roots and ProPublica that sweep-heavy tactics like Portland’s damage safety rather than improve it, placing homeless people at greater risk of harm or death. Current and former staff members at six local service providers, like Rose Haven Executive Director Katie O’Brien, say the city’s approach failed to do what was promised.

O’Brien said more people are in crisis when they arrive at Rose Haven, a daytime shelter serving women and transgender people.

“It is adding to the complexities and the challenges that they are already dealing with, mentally, physically, safety-wise,” said O’Brien.

Katie O’Brien, right, executive director of Rose Haven, has lunch with guest Leslie and her dog, Norma. Leslie is a sixth-generation Oregonian. (Leah Nash for ProPublica)

Cody Bowman, a spokesperson for the city, called the increase in deaths during the most recent efforts “heartbreaking and deeply concerning.”

He told the news organizations the city takes “a multifaceted approach to saving lives and supporting individuals in crisis.” The steps the city has taken include providing new shelter beds, investing in outreach, sweeping encampments in areas with accidents and floods, and dispatching emergency personnel as part of the city’s life-saving measures, he said. Bowman also said the city trained sweep crews to use medication that can save someone who is overdosing.

Increased Risk From Sweeps

Homeless residents in Multnomah County die, on average, more than 30 years earlier than the average U.S. life expectancy of 78, according to the most recent Multnomah County homeless fatality report.

Some 1,200 homeless people died in Multnomah County from 2019 through 2023, according to the Multnomah County Health Department. Of those, 659 died of drug- and alcohol-related causes, 323 died of natural causes, and 142 died of homicide or suicide — a rate about 18 times higher than among the general population in Portland.

Multnomah County Had a Higher Death Rate of Homeless Residents Than Other West Coast Counties

The Oregon county, which encompasses Portland and surrounding towns, also saw the biggest death rate increase between 2019 and 2023.

Note: Homeless population estimates are based on point-in-time counts. Data does not include natural deaths in hospitals because it was not available in all counties. The San Francisco Department of Public Health did not respond to requests for data. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)

Forcibly moving homeless people can increase overdoses, according to a 2023 peer-reviewed study published in the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA. The authors estimated that among homeless people who inject drugs, those who face repeated sweeps are 10% to 22% more likely to die from an overdose than those who don’t. They were also far less likely to obtain medication for opioid use disorder.

“We know that the more people are swept, the more they lose access to their medications,” said Dr. Josh Barocas, a physician and co-author of the study. “They lose access to their community. And they lose access to hope, and therefore they actually are at increased risk of overdose and death.”

Perhaps no one knows the risks to Portland’s homeless population better than Dr. William Toepper, a volunteer physician working to reduce Portland’s rising homeless mortality for the past seven years. And since the surge in sweeps after 2020, Toepper sees an increasingly scattered population.

“I don’t know why they’re spending this money on destabilizing people and displacing them,” Toepper said of the city of Portland. “I don’t know why anyone thinks that would help. It’s not like they’re being swept to services.”

Toepper leads one of four crews at Portland Street Medicine, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2018, each crew covering a different part of the city. Toepper’s team makes weekly rounds in North Portland in and around Delta Park, where industrial districts and strip malls converge on one of the city’s largest parks. The team goes from tent to tent — along bike paths, sidewalks, waterways and freeway overpasses — treating wounds, infections and post-operative incisions, and helping people monitor and manage chronic health conditions. While they can’t dispense prescription medication, they write prescriptions and help coordinate pharmacy trips.

First image: Dr. William Toepper, co-founder of Portland Street Medicine, shares supplies during a street round in Portland, Oregon. Second image: Patient Duane, who lives in his car, receives treatment from Mary Sorteberg, a nurse and volunteer with Portland Street Medicine. (Leah Nash for ProPublica)

Toepper said medically vulnerable and disabled people are especially at risk of severe outcomes from sweeps. That was the case with one of Toepper’s patients, Debby Beaver, 57, who died in 2019. Beaver had seizures, high blood pressure and diabetes. She lived in an encampment at the intersection of Southeast 35th Avenue and Yamhill Street, a residential area one block removed from a bustling shopping district, when city contractors dismantled the encampment and took her medications, according to a wrongful death suit filed by her family.

John Mayer, former executive director of a homeless services nonprofit across the street from where Beaver slept, described her as a “very sweet, kind of elderly stateswoman of the place.”

Beaver died a week after the sweep as a result of losing her medication, according to the lawsuit. In court, the private, for-profit company hired to remove homeless people living in the area said it never swept Beaver’s encampment or took her medication. The company maintains its workers did not seize Beaver’s medication, but it settled the lawsuit for $45,000 in July 2024, without admitting any wrongdoing.

“It was a little bit of a sense of, you know, this was bound to happen to somebody, and here it is,” Toepper said of Beaver’s death. “Even with this story and with the publicity it gained, and a pretty decent amount of witnesses to it, as far as I can tell, well, nothing’s changed.”

In an email to Street Roots and ProPublica, the city acknowledged sweeps can be traumatic or harmful but said it works to minimize the risks. Bowman said the city worked in consultation with Oregon Justice Resource Center, a civil rights law firm, to minimize harm.

The firm said it represented homeless plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city and agreed to a settlement. While the city posts notices saying its contractors will sweep an area in the next three to 10 days, the settlement required the city to give additional notice the day before a sweep and provide more precise sweep locations and descriptions of items it would discard or save.

“Sweeps in and of themselves are traumatic, harmful experiences for those experiencing them and are simply not necessary to solve homelessness,” said Alice Lundell, the firm’s communications director. The group “does not endorse or support the city’s current sweep policies,” she added.

When asked if sweeps led to more deaths, the city said the relationship needed more study.

“We keep detailed records and make our camp removal data publicly available,” Bowman said. “We would welcome research using that data as part of a comprehensive analysis exploring this question.”

Neglecting Housing

The other prong of the city’s approach to homelessness was a pivot toward shelters and away from long-term housing — another move each of the four experts said could contribute to the increasing death rate among homeless people. Case narratives from the county report on homeless deaths often cite a lack of stable housing as a factor.

Matthew Fowle, a University of Pennsylvania researcher who’s studied homeless mortality, said data shows cities with robust shelter systems like New York City and Boston still have high homeless mortality rates, but they are considerably lower than Portland’s.

“All solutions to homeless deaths begin and end with housing — with safe, stable and affordable housing,” Fowle said, adding that supportive services sometimes need to accompany that housing. “It’s an absolutely necessary condition to reduce homeless deaths.”

An encampment in Portland. Experts say stable housing can reduce deaths of homeless people. (Leah Nash for ProPublica)

In Portland, the decision to focus on short-term shelter came after Wheeler wanted to enforce a public sleeping ban in the city. A federal court had ruled cities could not fine or arrest homeless people for public sleeping if the city could not offer shelter. Although the Supreme Court has since reversed it, at the time, the federal court ruling meant Portland needed thousands of shelter beds to enforce its ban on public sleeping. The city more than quadrupled its annual sweep and shelter spending — from $16.3 million in 2021 to $72.5 million in 2025 — adding up to nearly a quarter of a billion dollars across the five years. It added 826 shelter beds since 2021.

Multnomah County’s local public shelter system now has approximately 3,000 beds and operates near capacity each night, according to the county. Although the county homeless census shows 6,300 homeless people on any given day, as many as 15,245 use homeless services in a month. Some may be temporarily homeless.

The city says emergency shelters are an important tool for connecting homeless people with services like addiction treatment, but critics say shelter restrictions push people back to the streets. Shelters are often first-come, first-served, and may prohibit or limit pets, romantic partners and belongings. Strict in-and-out times may also preclude homeless Portlanders with jobs.

The city has also placed 651 shed-sized single-person pods with heat and electricity in several parts of the city away from the downtown core. The pod cities are managed by contractors, some of which have faced criticism for heavy-handed management, overly strict security protocols and a confusing referral process.

Bowman said the city does not view the effort to address homelessness as a choice between shelter and permanent housing. In an email to Street Roots and ProPublica, he referenced the city’s affordable housing program as evidence of a continued investment in permanent housing. The city spent more than $1 billion since 2019 to increase affordable housing supply to low- and medium-income people via the city’s Inclusionary Housing program.

Much of that housing is out of reach for homeless people. City records show landlords could charge at least $1,229 per month for 95% of the units created under the program in 2024, which local and federal standards deem affordable only to people earning $49,560 or more.

The lack of available permanent housing for homeless Portlanders is cited in the county’s annual report on homeless deaths.

Of the 17 narratives published in the last five reports about individuals who died, 10 include some reference to a lack of consistent access to housing, shelter, services or some combination of the three. Multiple narratives discuss emergency shelter not providing long-term solutions.

Nancy Lee Charlotte Hill, 35, grew up in foster care with physical and learning disabilities. Hill worked hard to get through high school with good grades while working a job, her sister Loraine said. It was around that time Hill began using drugs and alcohol. She applied her penchant for hard work to sobriety, accessing treatment on multiple occasions. But without housing, she had nowhere but the streets when she left treatment and struggled to stay sober, her sister told the county.

She died on a sidewalk July 5, 2023, in downtown Portland near the Tom McCall Waterfront Park after taking a combination of fentanyl and methamphetamine.

“Nancy had a strong desire to live her own path,” her sister said in a narrative. “But she was only in her 30s when she died. She had a whole life left to live.”

John Ellstrom, 54, was another resident who needed stability he never found, said his sister Tamara. Ellstrom first became homeless as a kid after running away from abusive foster homes. He spent years with addiction and tried to get help. He managed a year of sobriety and began renting a place and going to school for engineering. He and Tamara were close, and she did everything she could to support him. But he relapsed and was back on the streets. A driver in an SUV struck and killed Ellstrom while he walked across the Morrison Bridge on Mother’s Day, May 8, 2022.

“He needed a place where he could’ve stayed and gotten help,” Tamara told the county in a narrative.

A memorial to homeless people who have died in Portland hangs on the wall of Portland Street Medicine’s office. (Leah Nash for ProPublica)

Data sources for graphic: Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office, Multnomah County Homeless Services Division, San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, Public Health — Seattle & King County, All Home — Seattle/King County, Santa Clara County Medical Examiner, Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Correction

June 11, 2025: This story originally misidentified Tacoma as belonging to the same Washington state county as Seattle. Seattle and Tacoma are in different counties.

by María Inés Zamudio, Invisible Institute

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Invisible Institute and co-published with the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A former Chicago police officer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to felony charges in connection with two incidents of sexual misconduct involving female colleagues — one that occurred while at the police training academy and one at a police precinct.

The case against Eric Tabb was highlighted in an Invisible Institute-ProPublica investigation that found that Chicago police officials have frequently failed to vigorously investigate allegations of sexual misconduct made against city officers.

Tabb, 35, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated battery in a public place, a Class 3 felony, and was sentenced to 30 months of probation. As part of a plea agreement, some of Tabb’s charges were dropped and he was required to enroll in a sex offender program.

Tabb, who was arrested in December 2023 and fired, is one of 14 officers accused of sexual assault in the past decade who we found had been accused at least once before of sexual misconduct. Investigative files show that five of 17 women in his academy class have given similar accounts of inappropriate sexual contact involving Tabb.

A team of Invisible Institute reporters reviewed more than 300 sexual misconduct and assault complaints against Chicago officers. The complaints were often downplayed or ignored, sometimes allowing officers to abuse again and again. The Chicago Police Department said in a statement for that story that it “takes all allegations of sexual assault seriously, including allegations against CPD members.”

During a hearing before Cook County Judge James B. Novy, Tabb’s two victims, both of whom are police officers, read impact statements in court.

“The women I speak for today, including myself, were women that trusted Eric Tabb, spending eight months with him forming that trust in a police academy. As of today, there is hope that all us women affected can put this in the past,” one of the officers read from a prepared statement.

The judge said he agreed to the plea deal to allow the women to put the cases behind them.

“The only reason I went along with this deal is because of the victims,” said Novy, who warned Tabb that he will send him to prison if he doesn’t follow the terms of his probation. “Everyone wants closure. They want to put this behind them. I’m going to keep a close eye on this.”

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, in a statement Tuesday, noted the courage of the survivors to come forward after “a horrific betrayal of trust.”

“Despite the trauma they endured, these women stood firm in their pursuit of justice, and it is because of their strength and resolve that prosecutors were able to secure this conviction,” the prosecutors’ office said. “As a result, Eric Tabb is prohibited from ever serving as police officer again.”

The charges stemmed from two incidents. At a birthday party in August 2023 at a Wrigleyville bar, Tabb allegedly approached a fellow female recruit on the dance floor, whispered to her that he wanted to have sex with her, touched her breast, buttock and crotch, and then grabbed her face and tried to kiss her. Tabb was charged with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse from that incident.

The second incident took place after roll call inside a police precinct in December 2023. Tabb allegedly touched a fellow probationary police officer’s crotch several times when she stood up to adjust her duty belt, according to court records. She had attended the training academy with him.

At an earlier hearing, prosecutors had asked Novy to include two additional incidents that were not charged but were described as part of a pattern of behavior by Tabb. Tabb attended a “star party,” an unofficial celebration for graduating recruits receiving their badge number. At the party, a witness told investigators he saw Tabb grabbing another female recruit’s crotch. That same night, Tabb touched a second recruit’s buttocks, according to interviews with police investigators and court records.

Alexus Byrd-Maxey was the first recruit to report Tabb a few months after she and Tabb started at the academy, but her accusation never became part of the prosecution’s case. According to Byrd-Maxey, she was leaning over a classmate’s computer in March 2023 when Tabb walked behind her. She said she felt his hands on her waist and his body pressed up against her.

Byrd-Maxey tried to report Tabb several times but was unsuccessful. Investigative files obtained by the Invisible Institute and ProPublica show that Tabb told other recruits that Byrd-Maxey overreacted and that he had only tapped her on the shoulder to get to his seat. Other recruits supported his story. Almost three weeks later, there was a confrontation in class in which she allegedly told Tabb to “shut your bitch ass up” and supposedly used gang-related language. Byrd-Maxey denied those allegations but was fired.

Tabb and his attorney, Dan Herbert, declined to comment, but Herbert had previously said Tabb was innocent and blamed Byrd-Maxey for the claims by the other women.

While Byrd-Maxey couldn’t attend the hearing, her mom, Jauntaunne Byrd-Horne, was in the courtroom and later told her daughter about the plea agreement. Byrd-Maxey said she was disappointed.

“He’s been given grace, time and time again. They let him be a free man,” she said. “I feel like it’s still not being taken seriously, again.”

Sebastián Hidalgo contributed reporting.

Update, June 11, 2025: This story has been updated to include a comment from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which handled the case. It also clarifies how charges were handled in the plea agreement.

by William Turton, Christopher Bing, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Al Shaw and Jake Pearson

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In an effort launched shortly after DOGE’s creation, ProPublica has now identified more than 100 private-sector executives, engineers and investors from Silicon Valley, big American banks and tech startups enlisted to help President Donald Trump dramatically downsize the U.S. government.

While Elon Musk has departed the Department of Government Efficiency, the world’s richest man is leaving a network of acolytes embedded inside nearly every federal agency.

At least 38 DOGE members currently work or have worked for businesses run by Musk, ProPublica found in an examination of their resumes and other records. At least nine have invested in Musk companies or own stock in them, a review of available financial disclosure forms shows.

ProPublica found that at least 23 DOGE officials are making cuts at federal agencies that regulate the industries that employed them, potentially posing significant conflicts of interest. One DOGE member tasked with overseeing mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance, did so while owning stock in companies the agency regulated.

At least 12 remain, on paper, employees or advisers of the companies they worked at before DOGE, a review of financial disclosure forms shows. And at least nine continue to receive corporate benefits from their private-sector employers, including health insurance, stock vesting plans or retirement savings programs. These employment agreements could create a situation in which a DOGE staffer would be shaping federal policies that affect their employer.

The people behind DOGE are largely men in their 20s and 30s, most of whom bring no government experience to the task. Many of them previously worked in finance.

ProPublica’s list — the largest of its kind by any news organization — allows readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the backgrounds of the people assigned to one of the Trump administration’s signature efforts. It comes at a crucial moment, as some of the first-generation DOGE members are leaving the government and a new crop is joining.

“Even though Elon Musk and some of his top officials are shifting their attention to other issues, I see no indication that the DOGE team members who remain will slow down their work to test the legal and ethical boundaries of using technology in the name of improving government services,” said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.

While the Trump administration asserts it is the most transparent in history, DOGE operates shrouded by the shadows of bureaucracy.

Many of its staffers have deleted their public profiles, have wiped the internet of their professional backgrounds or were encouraged by leadership not to discuss their work with friends. At the behest of the Trump administration, the Supreme Court halted a court order Friday that would have required DOGE to turn over information to a government watchdog — challenging whether the group will ever be subject to public records requests. The Trump administration has banned DOGE staffers from speaking publicly without approval.

To cast a light on this secretive group, ProPublica began reporting in February on Musk’s influence inside the Trump administration, cataloging who was part of DOGE and how associates of the billionaire tech mogul were taking up senior posts across agencies. Our DOGE tracker, the first such list published by media outlets, is the culmination of hundreds of conversations with sources across government.

Today, we are adding 23 staffers to our tracker, taking the total to 109. They are spread throughout the government, from the Department of Defense to the General Services Administration to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And we are revealing the makeup of the DOGE team at the Defense Department, a group made up primarily of tech startup founders. They are led by former Special Forces soldier turned tech entrepreneur Yinon Weiss, according to a former senior Pentagon official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Weiss has repeatedly appeared on Fox News pushing the U.S. to do more to support Israeli military operations in Gaza. He did not respond to a request for comment.

A White House official praised DOGE in an interview, saying that “bringing people in from the outside is precisely what this federal government needed after decades of stagnant bureaucrats who allowed the status quo to continue while the American people got screwed.”

The White House official said there is “no need” for the public to know who’s in DOGE and asserted that there have been no conflict-of-interest violations.

“For decades, we’ve been able to operate without these people's names,” the official said. “There’s no need to know the palace intrigue of who’s working in the building.”

Musk has defended DOGE’s work as “common sense” and “not draconian or radical.” He did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk’s retreat from Washington comes after his electric vehicle company Tesla sputtered amid economic turmoil — caused by a mixture of his own declining favorability and some shareholders reportedly losing confidence in his leadership. His relationship with Trump has fractured, with the billionaire blasting the president’s budget, Trump threatening to cancel Musk’s government deals and Musk then calling for the president’s impeachment.

How that fissure affects DOGE is yet to be seen, but the White House has already requested $45 million in funding for the group’s operations next year, an Office of Management and Budget document shows.

One of Musk’s top DOGE lieutenants, Steve Davis, who ProPublica reported has operated as the group’s de facto leader, is also departing government. Davis ran DOGE from the commissioner’s suite on the sixth floor of the GSA. Some believe Trump loyalist and OMB Director Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect who once said he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma,” will take the DOGE reins.

Questioned Results

Whether DOGE has accomplished its mission — to downsize the federal bureaucracy into a more streamlined and effective workforce — is far from clear.

Musk initially said the initiative would save taxpayers $2 trillion. He later amended that figure, suggesting in April that DOGE would cut $150 billion from the national debt this year. The $180 billion in savings that DOGE claims on its website has come under scrutiny by media fact-checkers who have cast doubt on its accuracy after finding errors in DOGE’s accounting of canceled contracts.

Still, DOGE has fired tens of thousands of federal workers and gutted humanitarian aid programs domestically and abroad. This includes pushing out some critical government employees in health, science and safety offices.

To compile our list, ProPublica tracked the industries where DOGE employees previously worked. We looked at the professional experience they brought to government and whether their assignments in DOGE could pose conflicts of interest. ProPublica pored through archived resumes, federal financial disclosures forms, online databases and other documents. We interviewed more than two dozen federal workers, some of whom shared internal agency emails, calendar invites and other material mapping DOGE’s activities. We sought comment from everyone listed in our tracker. Most declined our requests.

With DOGE entering a post-Musk chapter, here are our core findings:

Potential conflicts of interest are increasing.

One 25-year-old software engineer helped DOGE shrink the agency’s staff even after he was warned by ethics attorneys not to do anything that could boost the value of as much as $715,000 in stocks he owned in companies regulated by the agency. The White House has said the aide, who has since left the CFPB, “did not even manage” the layoffs and called the allegations “another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission.” Another DOGE staffer, a political adviser to Musk, was paid between $100,001 and $1 million by one of his billionaire boss’ companies while simultaneously overseeing staff cuts at the CFPB. Neither staffer responded to requests for comment.

These and other instances of DOGE staffers overseeing government operations that could benefit their financial interests have prompted three Democratic lawmakers to ask the Department of Justice, government ethics officials and inspectors general to investigate.

The administration has made assessing such financial arrangements difficult. So far, federal agencies have released only 22 financial disclosure forms for the more than 100 DOGE members requested by ProPublica.

DOGE’s image as a group of computer engineers isn’t quite right. Many DOGE Members Came From Financial or Science-Related Industries

The DOGE 100-plus come from a variety of professions: 29 were executive managers, 28 were engineers, 16 were investors and 12 came from legal backgrounds. A scattered few others previously worked in cybersecurity, design and science.

More staffers come from finance backgrounds than any other area. Private equity investor Michael Cole, the founder of Shareholder Capital LLC, has worked at the Department of Agriculture, for example. Cole did not respond to a request for comment.

DOGE staffers are mostly young men with limited government experience.

Under Trump and Musk, DOGE has become a largely male entity. Of the 109 staff members ProPublica has identified, 90 are men and 19 are women, making the group 83% male. That’s a far higher percentage of men than work in the executive branch as a whole, where 54% of staffers are male, according to 2024 data from the Office of Personnel Management.

Many are young and inexperienced. More than 60% of the DOGE staffers are in their 20s or 30s. One was 19 when he joined. As a percentage, the number of staffers under 30 in DOGE is about three times as high as in the executive branch as a whole.

Of staffers for whom ProPublica has identified ages, 28 are 29 or younger, 35 are 30 to 39, and 36 are 40 or older. The oldest is 67.

The DOGE Wrecking Crew: Executives, Engineers, Investors, Lawyers

Few had experience working in state or federal government. ProPublica identified 21 DOGE staffers with previous government roles, including stints at the DOJ and NASA. That means more than 80% joined the government dismantling effort without previously working in government.

Those staffers continue to fire longtime federal employees, cut budgets and choke off government programs while protected by an administration that has pushed to keep their maneuverings out of the public spotlight.

DOGE’s secrecy has been part of its overall strategy, some experts believe, allowing it to obscure its work from government watchdogs and the courts.

“It’s harder to stop what they’re doing if you don’t know what they’re doing or who’s doing it,” said Faith Williams, director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. “It’s not inherently a bad thing these people come from outside the government. It’s that they lack any experience in the methods used to uncover waste and inefficiency.”

by Sharon Lerner and Lisa Song

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn a legal complaint filed last year against the GEO Group, a major donor to President Donald Trump that has more than $1 billion in contracts with the administration to run private prisons and ICE detention facilities.

The administrative complaint, which the EPA filed last June under the Biden administration, involved the GEO Group’s use of a disinfectant called Halt at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in California. The EPA regulates the product, which causes irreversible eye damage and skin burns, according to its label. By law, users are supposed to use goggles or a face shield, chemical resistant gloves and protective clothing.

But on more than 1,000 occasions in 2022 and 2023, the GEO group had its employees use the disinfectant without proper protections, the EPA complaint alleged. The agency alleged that GEO Group’s employees wore nitrile exam gloves that were labeled “extra soft” and “not intended for use as a general chemical barrier.” In a separate, pending lawsuit, people who were detained at the detention center alleged they were sickened by the company’s liberal use of a different disinfectant.

A hearing had yet to be scheduled before an administrative law judge. The maximum penalty for the company’s alleged misuse of Halt is more than $4 million. But a notice filed on Friday by Matthew Salazar, a manager in the EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, stated that the EPA’s case against the GEO Group would be dropped. The notice did not provide an explanation.

“This is a complete surrender,” said Gary Jonesi, an attorney who worked at the EPA for almost 40 years. “If this is not due to political intervention on behalf of an early and large Trump donor who stands to gain from managing ICE detention facilities and private prisons, then surely it is at least partly due to the intimidation that career staff feel in an environment when federal employees are being fired and reassigned to undesirable tasks and locations.”

A spokesperson for the White House said that the GEO Group has “provided services to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for several decades” and has been a major federal contractor for many years. The spokesperson did not say whether the White House played a role in the decision to withdraw the complaint but referred ProPublica to the EPA.

The EPA said in an email that, “As a matter of longstanding practice, EPA does not comment on litigation.” The GEO Group didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica. In a filing in response to the EPA’s complaint, the GEO Group admitted that its employees used Halt but said that the disinfectant “was applied in a manner consistent with its label at all times and locations.” The company also wrote in its court filing that the gloves its employees used are chemically resistant and offered appropriate protection.

The GEO Group has had close ties to the Trump administration. Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, was a lobbyist for the company in 2019. The attorney general “is in full compliance with all ethical guidance,” a spokesperson for the Department of Justice said in an email.

The firm was the first corporation whose political action committee “maxed out” on contributions to Trump’s presidential campaign. A subsidiary company, GEO Acquisition II, also gave $1 million to the pro-Trump PAC Make America Great Again. The GEO Group, its PAC and individuals affiliated with the company collectively contributed $3.7 million to candidates and political committees in the 2024 election cycle, compared with $2.7 million in 2020, according to OpenSecrets, an independent group that tracks money in politics. They donated overwhelmingly to Republicans: In every election cycle since 2016, at least 87% of their donations to federal candidates went to Republicans.

Data from the Federal Election Commission shows that George C. Zoley, the founder of the GEO Group, donated $50,000 in 2023 to a joint fundraising committee to support Republican efforts to maintain a majority in the House of Representatives. Zoley gave the maximum amount allowed for an individual per election at the time, $3,300, to Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s primary and general election campaigns in 2024.

The GEO group regularly and liberally sprayed disinfectants in the ICE facility, according to both the EPA complaint and a separate civil suit filed on behalf of Adelanto detainees. The EPA complaint did not state whether employees were harmed by the pesticide; it accused the company of inappropriately handling the pesticide.

The separate lawsuit, filed by the Social Justice Legal Foundation, alleges that Adelanto detainees were sickened by the use of a different disinfectant product, HDQ Neutral, made by the same company. “Various Plaintiffs had nosebleeds or found blood in their mouth and saliva. Others had debilitating headaches or felt dizzy and lightheaded,” the lawsuit stated. “GEO staff sprayed when people were eating, and the chemical mist would fall on their food. GEO staff sprayed at night, on or around the bunk beds and cells where people slept. And on at least one occasion, GEO staff sprayed individuals as a disciplinary measure.”

That lawsuit is still pending. The allegations echo a warning letter the EPA previously sent the company accusing the GEO Group of improperly using HDQ Neutral. That letter cited complaints from detainees at Adelanto who suffered “difficulty breathing,” “lung pain” and skin rashes from the disinfectant. The pesticide was sprayed onto bedding and inside microwaves, the EPA said. The GEO Group has told reporters that it rejects allegations that it’s using harmful chemicals, and that it follows the manufacturer’s instructions. In a court filing, the company said any problems alleged by the EPA “were the result of the declared national emergency concerning COVID-19.” A judge ordered ICE to stop using HDQ Neutral in 2020. The GEO Group began using Halt “on or about” March 2022, according to the EPA complaint.

Pratheek Rebala contributed reporting.

by Aliyya Swaby

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

New laws in Georgia and New Mexico are requiring harsher punishments for students — or anyone else — who make threats against schools, despite growing evidence that a similar law is ensnaring students who posed no risk to others.

ProPublica and WPLN News have documented how a 2024 Tennessee law that made threats of mass violence at school a felony has led to students being arrested based on rumors and for noncredible threats. In one case, a Hamilton County deputy arrested an autistic 13-year-old in August for saying his backpack would blow up, though the teen later said he just wanted to protect the stuffed bunny inside.

In the same county almost two months later, a deputy tracked down and arrested an 11-year-old student at a family birthday party. The child later explained he had overheard one student asking if another was going to shoot up the school tomorrow, and that he answered “yes” for him. Last month, the public charter school agreed to pay the student’s family $100,000 to settle a federal lawsuit claiming school officials wrongly reported him to police. The school also agreed to implement training on how to handle these types of incidents, including reporting only “valid” threats to police.

Tennessee requires schools to assess whether threats of mass violence are valid before expelling students. But the felony law does not hold police to the same standard, which has led to the arrests of students who had no intent to disrupt school or carry out a threat.

In Tennessee’s recent legislative session, civil and disability rights advocates unsuccessfully pushed to change the law to specify that police could arrest only students who make credible threats. They argued that very young students and students who act disruptively as a result of a disability should be excluded from felony charges.

Several Tennessee lawmakers from both parties also voiced their dissatisfaction with the school threats law during the session, citing the harm done to children who did not pose real danger. “I’m still struggling through the unintended consequences because I’m still not entirely happy with what we did before,” Sen. Kerry Roberts, a Republican, said at a committee hearing in April. “We’re still struggling to get that right.”

But Greg Mays, the deputy commissioner of the Department of Safety and Homeland Security, told a committee of lawmakers in March that in his “informed opinion,” the law was having a “deterrent effect” on students who make threats. Mays told ProPublica that the number of threats his office was tracking had decreased since the law went into effect. His office did not immediately release that number and previously denied requests for the number of threats it has tracked, calling the information “confidential.”

According to data ProPublica obtained through a records request, the number of students criminally charged is growing, not shrinking. This past school year through the end of March, the number of charges for threats of mass violence in juvenile court has jumped to 652, compared to 519 the entire previous school year, when it was classified as a misdemeanor. Both years, students were rarely found “delinquent,” which is equivalent to guilty in adult court. The youngest child charged so far this year is 6.

Rather than tempering its approach, Tennessee toughened it this year. The Legislature added another, higher-level felony to the books for anyone who “knowingly” makes a school threat against four or more people if others “reasonably” believe the threat will be carried out. Legal and disability rights advocates told lawmakers they worried the new law would result in even more confusion among police and school officials who handle threats.

Despite the outcry over increased arrests in Tennessee, two states followed its lead by passing laws that will crack down harder on hoax threats.

In New Mexico, lawmakers increased the charge for a shooting threat from a misdemeanor to a felony, in response to the wave of school threats over the previous year. To be charged with a felony, a person must “intentionally and maliciously” communicate the threat to terrorize others, cause the evacuation of a public building or prompt a police response.

Critics of the bill warned that even with the requirement to prove intent, it was written too vaguely and could harm students.

“This broad definition could criminalize what is described as ‘thought crimes’ or ‘idle threats,’ with implications for statements made by children or juveniles without a full appreciation of the consequences,” the public defenders’ office argued, according to a state analysis of an earlier, similar version of the legislation.

After a 14-year-old shot and killed four people at Apalachee High School in Georgia last September, the state’s House Speaker Jon Burns vowed to take tougher action against students who make threats.

He sponsored legislation that makes it a felony to issue a death threat against a person at a school that terrorizes people or causes an evacuation. The law, which went into effect in April, says someone can be charged either if they intend to cause such harm or if they make a threat “in reckless disregard of the risk” of that harm.

Neither Burns nor the sponsor of the New Mexico bill responded to requests for comment.

Georgia also considered a bill that would treat any 13- to 17-year-old who makes a terroristic threat at school as an adult in court. But after pushback from advocates, the bill’s author, Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Republican, removed threats from the list of offenses that could result in transfer to adult court.

During a March committee hearing, Dolezal acknowledged advocates’ concerns with the original bill language. “We recognize that there is actually a difference between people who actually commit these crimes and minors who are unwisely threatening but perhaps without an intent to ever actually follow through on it,” he said.

Other states also considered passing harsher penalties for school threats.

In Alabama, Rep. Alan Baker, a Republican, sponsored a bill that removes the requirement that a threat be “credible and imminent” to result in a criminal charge. The bill passed easily in both chambers but did not go through the final steps necessary to make it through the Legislature.

Baker said the broader version of the penalty was intended to target hoax threats that cause panic at schools. A first offense would be a misdemeanor; any threats after that would be a felony. “You’re just talking about a very disruptive type of scenario, even though it may be determined that it was just a hoax,” Baker said. “That’s why there needed to be something that would be a little bit more harsh.”

Baker told ProPublica that he plans to reintroduce the bill next session.

Pennsylvania is considering legislation that would make threats against schools a felony, regardless of credibility. The bill would also require offenders to pay restitution, including the cost of supplies and compensation for employees’ time spent responding to the threat.

In a memo last December, state Sen. Michele Brooks, a Republican, cited the “cruel and extremely depraved hoax” threats following Nashville’s Covenant School shooting as the reason for the proposal. “These calls triggered a massive emergency response, creating perilous conditions for students, teachers and public safety agencies alike,” she wrote.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania opposes the legislation, calling it a “broad expansion” of current law that could lead to “excessive” costs for children.

Pennsylvania’s Legislature adjourns at the end of December.

Paige Pfleger of WPLN/Nashville Public Radio contributed reporting.